Paterson to Veto 6,900 Budget Appropriations

While the legislature managed to approve a spending plan before Governor David A. Paterson’s self-declared Monday deadline, the Sturm und Drang that has been the New York state budget process over the past few months continues. Mere hours after passing the state senate, Paterson assailed the legislature’s budget as being filled with “gimmicks” and “chicanery” and that, in response, he would use his line item veto authority to remove thousands of appropriations from the proposed spending plan, including $420 million worth of school aid.

Though a proposed state budget document has been in existence in the beginning of January, Albany has been fueled by a series of emergency extender bills since the government missed its April deadline for passing a spending plan. As time went on, however, disagreements between the governor and prominent legislators sparked a near government shutdown as both parties butted heads over items like school aid cuts and soda taxes. Last week, perhaps tired of the constant tumult, Paterson told the legislature to come up with a completed budget document by Monday or else he’d bundle the remainder of his own proposals into the next emergency extender bill which would then have to be passed in order to avoid the government shutdown that many had been working so hard to avoid.

Despite being nearly seven months into 2010 without a spending plan, about 70 percent of the overdue budget has already been completed through the use of these emergency spending measures. However, several concerns regarding the legislature’s budget has led the governor to reject many parts of the remaining 30 percent. Among other provisions, Paterson took issue with hundreds of millions of dollars in school aid as well as the lack of an emergency fund in the event that federal Medicaid aid to New York fails to materialize, according to the New York Times.

The governor said that he will personally reject about 6,900 total line items approved by the legislature, a process that the Albany Times-Union says will take Paterson approximately 10 hours, assuming one veto every five seconds, provided he neither eats nor goes to the bathroom.