At 6 a.m. on Monday, a State Trooper will pick up Lt. Gov. Richard Ravitch at his Fifth Avenue apartment for the 2 1/2 -hour drive to Albany.
Over the next two days, the 76-year-old elder statesman of New York politics has scheduled back-to-back meetings with lawmakers to discuss the state’s Great White Whale: a finalized budget that attempts to close a $9.2 billion shortfall.
Sounds dramatic, but it’s likely the start of just another fruitless week on the Albany merry-go-round, 39 days and counting since the April 1 deadline for the state budget: another press conference, another meeting, another war of words — and another day without a budget or anyone to claim responsibility.
Some predict that the stalemate between the governor and the Legislature could drag beyond November’s elections, allowing candidates to duck any blame for cuts at the ballot box.
Could 2010 be the year without a budget?
“There’s a growing sense of urgency,” insists Ravitch, sitting in his Midtown office with The Post, drinking an iced espresso and fiddling with a cigarette lighter.
He has organized his two days upstate next week like a professor holding office hours. He’s trying to play the adult among lawmakers who often act like children who only know how to play in the sandbox alone.
“I have one legislature after another coming to talk to me about the budget to get my ideas,” he said. “Some of the urgency is lawmakers want to get the hell out of there. But there are disagreements that reflect what they think their constituents need and what they think they need in order to get reelected. Everyone’s going to compromise in the end.”
So far, it’s difficult to see what that compromise might look like.
State lawmakers say they’re stymied on how to dole out “real pain” to New Yorkers in an election year.
“The process of choosing how to apportion the cuts is very difficult,” said Democratic Assemblyman Richard Brodsky. “I get calls from advocates for people with brain injuries, from advocates for autistic children and advocates for the arts who all explain carefully how they can’t afford cuts, and it’s hard to disagree with the merits of the causes. That difficulty is what is taking so much time.”
Paterson’s depleted political capital isn’t helping the situation, either As a lameduck governor, he cannot offer lawmakers future rewards for their current cooperation on his budget, which involves reducing school aid by $1.1. billion and slashing health-care spending by $1 billion.
Colleagues in the Senate and union brass also accuse Paterson of failing to build trust through honest negotiations.
“One word can describe his governing style: paper,” said a Senate source. “There are no talks, only press releases.”
Senate Majority Leader John Sampson, for example, learned of the governor’s plan to impose one-day-a-week unpaid furlough on 100,000 state workers — a plan intended to save the state $250 million — via press release, according to a source.
“David called me a week ago to talk about organ donations but not to talk about the budget,” said Brodsky.
Union brass, who have refused to forgo their promised 4% raise, admitted they’ve been “harder on Paterson than any governor in history.” But they said they were only “countering his tactics.”
“He characterizes it as a negotiation, but we haven’t met in three weeks,” said Stephen Madarasz, a spokesman for the Civil Service Employee Union. “He has had only two meetings with [union President] Danny Donohue. He undermines any good will because we never get any heads up about what he’s going to say about us, he just talks to the media.”
The unions balked at the furloughs, and state leaders questioned the legality of the move.
“There are substantial legal issues with the governor’s proposal for workers under collectively bargained contract,” said Austin Shafran, a spokesman for Sampson.
The $9 billion question among union leaders is: “Where is Richard Ravitch in all this?”
His response: “I have not been involved in any discussions with the unions because nobody’s asked me to.”
It’s not the only arena where the state’s No. 2 has been sidelined.
Last March, Ravitch delivered to the governor his own recommendations for fixing the state budget, which allowed the state to borrow responsibly. Paterson quickly dismissed any form of borrowing.
Today, there is no set schedule for his discussions with the governor, Ravitch said.
“I speak with David whenever I have to,” he said. “It’s not that there is a conflict between us; I don’t want borrowing either. I just think it’s inevitable and the only relevant question is: what kind of borrowing will there be?”
Some argue that there’s little for the governor to do until the Senate and the Assembly come to an agreement on school aid. The Assembly budgets seeks to restore $600 million in cuts from the executive’s plan. The Senate seeks to slash $1.4 billion for schools.
Last week, Mayor Bloomberg joined the fight, blaming the state for trying to balance its own budget by “starving New York City” and forcing him to cut 6,414 teachers.
“My hope is every day that Albany will announce that all night long, unbeknownst to everybody, they negotiated a budget that everybody that voted on it had never read and the governor had never read [but] signed it,” Bloomberg said.
Ravitch dismissed the bluster as the “annual charade budget negotiations” and said Bloomberg was “posturing” to get the Legislature to restore deep education cuts. But creating bombastic headlines wouldn’t earn him a win upstate, he said.
In the Assembly, the focus continues to be on restoring some of the $1.4 billion in cuts that the Senate has proposed for education. Meanwhile, Senate leaders have called property-tax relief a “primary objective.”
Ravitch, however, sees incremental progress.
“I have spent a great deal of my time trying to persuade individual legislatures that we’re not in a one year crisis — that we’re in a long term fundamental economic change,” he said. “More and more people are now accepting that.”
It’s a slow and costly learning curve in Albany.
STATE BUDGET BINGO
Gov. Paterson’s proposed state budget, which is stuck in limbo in Albany.
Spending: $134 billion
That’s $787 million more than last year’s budget but $9.4 billion less than it would be without cuts.
Big-ticket items:
* Medicaid: $51 billion (38% of the entire budget!)
* Education and arts spending: $20.5 billion
* Transportation: $9 billion
* Public safety: $4.7 billion
* Higher education: $3 billion
Cuts:
* Reduce school aid by $1.1 billion
* Slashing health-care spending by $1 billion — including reduction of aid to Medicaid providers.
* Cut SUNY support by $118 million
* Furloughing more than 100,000 state employees one day a week to save $250 million
* Cut state aid to local governments by 5%
* Shutter four prisons
New Taxes:
* $1 increase in cigarette tax
* One penny-per-ounce tax on sugared beverages
Borrowing:
Not part of Paterson’s budget, but Lt. Gov. Ravich says it’s inevitable.