Pataki Blames Silver on Budget

ALBANY – It’s Shelly’s fault.That, in a nutshell, is the message Governor Pataki and the Senate’s majority leader, Joseph Bruno, sought to convey yesterday at the fifth public leaders meeting on Mr. Pataki’s proposed $105 billion budget. Shelly, of course, is the speaker of the Assembly, Sheldon Silver, a Democrat.It is uncertain whether the meetings, convened as an attempt to speed up the budget process, will achieve their stated goal. The Legislature and the governor have agreed on revenue and spending totals far earlier than in previous years, but there is less than three weeks remaining before the April 1 deadline and the heavy lifting of policy negotiations has yet to begin.One unstated goal of the talks already may have been achieved. At yesterday’s meeting, Messrs. Bruno and Pataki repeatedly cast Mr. Silver as an obstacle to progress. For years, the governor has blamed Mr. Silver for obstructing private budget negotiations. By making the talks public, Mr. Pataki is essentially asking the public to draw its own conclusion.In this, Mr. Pataki has had a strong ally in Mr. Bruno. The two at times appeared exasperated at Mr. Silver for his proposal to submit budget resolutions, or statements of intent, rather than actual budget bills, in the days leading up to the deadline. Mr. Silver has said he is reluctant to propose bills until Mr. Pataki rewrites major portions of his budget. Mr. Pataki refuses to forfeit his executive privileges.“As I’ve said many times, I’m the governor, and I’m going to exercise my gubernatorial powers,” he said.The conflict over budget language reflects a deeper dispute over the balance of power in Albany. A Court of Appeals decision in December prohibits legislators from altering an executive budget in the course of negotiations. Mr. Silver has argued that the governor has exploited this ruling in his budget, by folding policy language into his appropriation bills. At yesterday’s meeting, he called on the governor to remove all policy language from the budget. The court was unclear on whether such an alternative is possible.Mr. Bruno, a Republican of Rensselaer County, also disagrees with much of the language in the executive budget, but over the past week has agreed to negotiate on controversial portions of it in private communications with Mr. Pataki’s staff. On the strength of those conversations, the Senate intends to introduce its own budget bills later this week, Mr. Bruno said yesterday. Much of yesterday’s meeting consisted of pleas by Messrs. Bruno and Pataki for Mr. Silver to do the same.“Shelly, if you work out language with the governor, can you work out budget bills?” Mr. Bruno asked plaintively.When Mr. Silver would not commit, Mr. Pataki seized on his intransigence, using it as a leitmotif for the rest of the half-hour meeting played out in front of legislative aides and a dense clutch of newspaper and television reporters, and at a separate press conference. In an effort to illustrate that he and Mr. Bruno have worked harder than Mr. Silver to meet the budget deadline, Mr. Pataki brought two props to the press conference: In one hand were budget bills, about the width of a truck tire; in the other were resolutions, about the width of a racing bike tire.“Perhaps from this you can get some idea of why it’s been so disappointing to get a resolution from the Assembly,” Mr. Pataki said.As if the props and head-rolling were not enough to illustrate the point that Messrs. Bruno and Pataki sought to convey at the meeting, Mr. Bruno provided spectators with an explicit prompt: “Let’s face facts, Shelly,” he said, as news cameras rolled. “We’re going to have budget bills by Friday. If we don’t have a budget, it’s not going to be our fault.”Mr. Silver returned fire: “If you and the governor want a late budget, we’ll have a late budget.”Lawmakers in New York have not passed an on-time budget since 1984, a string of failures that helped the state’s government earn the distinction “most dysfunctional” in a report issued by New York University’s Brennan Center last summer. By breaking this cycle, Mr. Pataki could establish himself as a reformer – a designation that could help the governor in the event that he chooses to seek a fourth term. Mr. Pataki, whose approval ratings are currently at a 10-year low, has not said whether he plans to run for governor in 2006.

Pataki Blames Silver on Budget

Pataki Blames Silver on Budget

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