Senate GOP Promises Budget Reform Before End of Year

ALBANY – Senate Republicans are promising to overhaul the dysfunctional state budget process by the end of this year, even if it means overriding a veto from Governor Pataki, Majority Leader Joseph Bruno said yesterday.Mr. Bruno said he still hopes to negotiate an agreement on budget reform with Mr. Pataki, a fellow Republican, and majority Democrats in the Assembly before returning to the Capitol in early December.If that doesn’t happen, however, Mr. Bruno said he will push ahead with the legislation Mr. Pataki vetoed on Monday, which both houses passed unanimously earlier this year.Legislative leaders say their reform plan would end Albany’s 20-year streak of late budgets. Among other provisions, it calls for delaying the start of the fiscal year by one month, to May 1, automatically imposing a contingency budget when lawmakers fail to agree by that date, and setting up an “independent budget office” to referee disagreements over spending estimates and revenue forecasts. It is coupled with a proposed constitutional amendment that could be put on the ballot for voter approval next November.Mr. Pataki rejected the legislation, contending it shifts too much control over financial affairs from the executive to the legislative branch. He argued it would actually encourage late budgets, since legislators would be free to ignore his spending proposals and draft their own spending bills once a contingency budget goes into effect.Mr. Bruno said yesterday that he considers some of Mr. Pataki’s concerns “valid,” but not enough to abandon the plan entirely.“It took 10 years to achieve the budget reform agreement with the Assembly, and we cannot allow this opportunity to fix the process to slip by,” Mr. Bruno said in a written statement. He said overriding the governor would be “a last resort.”Mr. Pataki said he was willing to compromise. “We’re having constructive dialogue on these issues,” he said. “I’m an optimist by nature. And we’re going to try and see if we can reach agreement.”Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, a Democrat of Manhattan, signaled on Monday that his house was ready to override the governor, although the Senate must act first. Yesterday, his spokesman, Charles Carrier, said the Assembly would consider passing alternative legislation in its place.“It would depend on discussions taking place which haven’t taken place up to this point,” Mr. Carrier said. “If we were able to talk and work something out, that would be a way to get this done for the state and a good thing.”Budget reform isn’t the only issue that Mr. Bruno committed to address before the end of the year. He reiterated a promise that a proposed increase in the minimum wage, which Mr. Pataki also vetoed, will take effect in January one way or another – implying that the Senate will either override the governor or negotiate an alternative measure.The vetoed bill would gradually increase the minimum wage by $2 an hour, to $7.15, by January 2007.Mr. Bruno also vowed to adopt some of the changes in legislative rules recommended by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, which reported this summer that New York’s state government is the most dysfunctional in the nation.“We got the message loud and clear that it’s time for changes,” he said.Mr. Bruno added, however, that he considered some of the Brennan Center findings to be inaccurate or exaggerated and said the Republican majority will not be giving up its decision-making power. “The majority rules in a democracy,” he said. “Otherwise it’s not a democracy.”“I’m glad they’re talking about doing specific reforms,” the associate counsel of the Brennan Center, Jeremy Creelan, said yesterday. “Until we see what the whole package is, it’s hard to say whether they’re meaningful or not.”Mr. Pataki, for his part, said he would like the Legislature to take up anti-drunken driving legislation when it returns to the Capitol next month.Under his proposal, anyone who is drunk behind the wheel and causes a death would be subject to a minimum of five years in prison. Currently, prosecutors must show that a driver was both drunk and otherwise reckless, and the minimum sentence is little more than a year. “This is the least we can do to protect the citizens of the streets of New York,” Mr. Pataki said.He was joined at a news conference by the parents of two victims of a recent crash at Queens, which killed 11-year-old Vasean Alleyne and temporarily put 12-year-old Angel Reyes in a coma.“There is no such thing as too severe a punishment when a DWI is concerned, because it always could be avoided,” Vasean’s mother, Monique Dixon, said yesterday. “My son did not have to die on October 22nd.”Mr. Pataki noted that his proposal – which he has dubbed “Vasean’s law” – passed the Senate unanimously this year, but has yet to be taken up by the Assembly.Mr. Carrier, the Assembly spokesman, said that his house has a similar bill “that we have been discussing with the Senate and would very much like to negotiate and get enacted.”The Assembly, meanwhile, would like use a December session to address Mr. Pataki’s 195 budget vetoes, which trimmed $1.8 billion in spending and borrowing from the $103 billion budget the Legislature approved in August, Mr. Carrier said. The Assembly is prepared to negotiate an agreement to restore that spending or, in cooperation with the Senate, override the vetoes, he said.Under constitutional rules, the Legislature has until the end of the calendar year to override vetoes.

Senate GOP Promises Budget Reform Before End of Year

Senate GOP Promises Budget Reform Before End of Year

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