Governor Pataki and his successor-to-be, Eliot Spitzer, urged the state Legislature yesterday to adopt without changes a state task force report calling for closing nine hospitals and seven nursing homes as part of a larger shake-up of the health care system across the state.

Mr. Pataki said the so-called Berger Commission had done “an outstanding job” coming up with the report issued Tuesday.

“It’s the right thing for New York’s health care future,” Mr. Pataki said while speaking to reporters at the state Capitol via satellite from Kuwait after a visit to Iraq.

Mr. Spitzer, the state attorney general who becomes governor on January 1, issued a statement calling for acceptance of the plan even though he said “there may be individual recommendations included in this report with which I would disagree.”

Mr. Spitzer said that in implementing the recommendations, he would “pay careful attention to the service delivery, workforce, financial, and economic implications involved.”

Under legislation creating the commission, Mr. Pataki has until December 5 to submit the report to the Legislature, which must then adopt or reject it in its entirety by the end of the year. [Pataki is expected to endorse the report and send it to lawmakers today, a spokesman said.]

A spokesman for state Senate Republican Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, John McArdle, said the legislation creating the commission appears to require both houses of the Legislature to reject the recommendations or they become law automatically. But Mr. McArdle said there has been some speculation the Senate and Assembly could adopt new legislation that would give lawmakers beyond the end of the year to consider the recommendations.