Rochester Business Journal

Gov. David Paterson submitted emergency legislation Tuesday that would give him one-time authority to cut the 2009-10 budget and close a $3.2 billion current-year shortfall.

“I want to make clear that this is not a cash flow problem that can be fixed with one-shots or creative accounting,” Paterson said. “This is a lack-of-cash crisis that threatens the financial stability of our state. Unless we take action, the state will run out of money.”

Paterson and the state Legislature have been unable to agree on ways to reduce spending.

“For seven weeks I have tried to persuade the Legislature to face this reality,” Paterson said. “So far, certain legislators remain unwilling to acknowledge the severity of the crisis or to do what must be done. The people of New York have waited long enough.”

Payment reductions under the proposed legislation would be implemented across the board, “uniformly applied to the extent practicable,” Paterson said.

The proposal includes a legislative finding that the state’s current-year deficit “presents a genuine danger that the state will lack the funds necessary to make payments as they come due,” Paterson said.

The payments to be reduced must be identified by Dec. 31, Paterson said, and would exclude reduction payments for debt service and collective bargaining obligations, and expenditures required under federal law, and the state and federal constitutions.

Brian Kolb, R-Canandaigua and minority leader of the state Assembly, said Paterson’s proposal is too late in coming.

“The past three weeks of failure to bring a deficit reduction plan forward for an up or down vote turned the recent special session into a waste of time and, more importantly, a waste of taxpayers’ money,” Kolb said in a statement.

“Today’s action by the governor, to finally submit a plan, should have been done weeks ago. Instead, we have been waiting since October 15 when the governor first proposed his DRP. Having come from the private sector, I know that if a business was run as inefficiently and ineptly as state government, it would be out of business.”

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