State Senator Joseph Bruno made the case for the budget reform amendment during a meeting at The New York Sun’s offices yesterday.

Should the Legislature fail to act on the governor’s budget proposal by its deadline, the amendment, Proposal 1 on November’s ballot, would require that the previous year’s budget be instituted as a contingency. The deadline for action by the Legislature would shift to May 1 from April 1.

At that point, the normal battle over additional appropriations would begin. At present, legislators not only cannot propose additional spending until they have acted on the governor’s budget, but, if they miss the deadline, they lose their salaries until they do.

“This budget reform tries to correct some of the balance and the equity in the process,” Mr. Bruno, a Republican of Rensselear County, said. Supporters of the amendment have criticized a Court of Appeals ruling last year that limited the power of legislators to alter the governor’s appropriation bills.

Because the governor would retain his line-item veto power should the amendment pass, the budget process would be “exactly what happens now, only you’ve had a late budget for 20 years,” he said. “So May 1 hits, so what? You now have a contingency in place, dollars flow to the emergency places, and now you want your project? You want other things? You have to negotiate them,” Mr. Bruno said.

He added that the amendment would impose debt caps, appropriate school aid in two-year intervals – instead of the current one year – and institute an independent budget office, based on the Congressional Budget Office in Washington, which would determine the extent of the funds available.

“You want to hold up the budget in this state, all you have to do is not agree on” the amount you have to spend, he said. Mr. Bruno was asked what he would do if the amendment passes and the Democratic Party gained control of both houses of the Legislature and the governor’s office. “I would move to any place other than New York State,” he said. “You wouldn’t be able to live here.”

Currently, the Democrats hold the majority in only the Assembly. The League of Women Voters, the New York Public Intereste Group, the AFL-CIO, the Public Employees Union, and the United Federation of Teachers have all come out in support of the amendment.

The list of groups officially opposing the amendment grew larger yesterday, with the Business Council of New York State reporting that seven new business associations had joined Stop the Amendment, a coalition of watchdog groups, fiscal policy analysts, and others seeking to defeat Proposal 1.

“Speaking with one voice for manufacturing and business throughout central upstate New York, we stand opposed to the proposed amendment, as it removes several of the important checks and balances necessary for fiscal constraint currently written into the state budget process,” the president of the Manufacturers Association, Randall Wolken, said.

The coalition’s other new members are the Business Council of Westchester, the chambers of commerce of Greater Syracuse, Mohawk Valley, and Orchard Park, and the county chambers of Plattsburgh-North and Otsego Counties.

Governor Carey, who saw New York through its fiscal crisis of the late 1970s, is chairman of the coalition, which currently includes the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce, the National Federation of Independent Business, and two state budget directors under Governor Cuomo, Wayne Diesel and Dall Forsyth, among others.

Both Governor Pataki and Attorney General Elliot Spitzer, the presumed Democratic candidate for governor in 2006, also oppose the amendment, as do Mayor Koch and Seymour Lachman, a Democratic state senator from Brooklyn from 1996 to 2004.