Paterson Widens Budget While Demanding Cuts

When Governor Paterson in late May was promoting an effort to slash the budgets of his state agencies by 3.35%, he delivered an unusually harsh warning to his commissioners.“If you can’t cut 3.35% off of your budget and still be effective, I would ask them to go back and take another look at it,” Mr. Paterson said before a gathering of reporters in Albany. “If that doesn’t work, maybe we’ll have somebody else take a look at it.”For the former lieutenant governor, whose administration must carve out the same percentage of spending from his new office, leading by example may not be so easy.As the governor has urged his agencies to freeze hiring or trim their staffs, Mr. Paterson in the early days of his administration has overseen an expansion of the executive chamber.To a large degree, the growth in employees and salaries is a reflection of the fact that the lieutenant governor’s office did not really disappear with the resignation of Eliot Spitzer.Technically, New York no longer has an office of the lieutenant governor — the position was eliminated at the beginning of the fiscal year in April after Mr. Paterson took over from Mr. Spitzer.An examination of personnel data provided by the state comptroller’s office shows that the office was not so much terminated but absorbed by the new governor.All but one of Mr. Paterson’s 13 employees followed him to the executive chamber and many were awarded substantial pay increases, including one staffer whose salary almost doubled, to $130,000.While a few members of Mr. Paterson’s staff replaced people who worked for Mr. Spitzer, his executive chamber is now larger than the combined staffs of Mr. Spitzer’s office and the lieutenant governor’s office at the time Mr. Spitzer resigned.At the beginning of this month, Mr. Paterson had 176 employees on his payroll, including himself, according to the comptroller’s office. In March, Mr. Spitzer’s office employed 160 people.Mr. Paterson’s yearly payroll totals $15.68 million, $1.5 million more than what the state was spending on personnel during the Spitzer administration.The data doesn’t take into account the recent departures of three high-level staffers — the director of state operations, a deputy secretary, and the governor’s counsel. The exits, however, are not likely to lead to an overall reduction in the staffing level. Mr. Paterson has already filled two of those positions with acting officials, who had held senior positions in the chamber that will, in turn, also be filled.Like every other state agency, the executive chamber is required to trim its current fiscal year spending projections by 3.35% under a budget agreement with the Legislature that was intended to reduce next year’s multibillion-dollar deficit by about $500 million.Given that 80% of the executive chamber’s expenses are personnel costs, the enlargement of Mr. Paterson’s staff means that the governor will be hard-pressed to cut his budget by the benchmark he set without sending out a lot of pink slips.Exactly how the governor gets out of this tricky situation was not answered by Mr. Paterson’s own budget-cutting plan.Compared to the plans prepared by his agency heads, who in many cases cited specific cuts, Mr. Paterson’s outline is shorter in length and more vague. His office mapped out its strategy in a single page, while other similarly sized agencies turned in documents that often ran more than a dozen pages.“As we proceed through the first year of this new Administration, we will continue to evaluate staffing and the functions of this Office with the goal of reducing Personal Service spending to ensure that these savings are realized during the course of this fiscal year and in the out-years,” the governor’s plan states. “It is expected that savings will be achieved through attrition and the limited filling of vacancies.”A spokesman for the Division of the budget, Matt Anderson, said, “Regardless of any effects that the transition may have had in the short term, we are still at a relatively early stage in the current fiscal year, which began in April. Ultimately, we are very confident that the Governor’s Office will meet its year-end savings target.”

Paterson Widens Budget While Demanding Cuts

Paterson Widens Budget While Demanding Cuts

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