ALBANY — Just a pile of trash.
That’s how the state’s top lawmakers treated Gov. Paterson’s last-ditch effort to balance Albany’s books yesterday. They left his plan sitting on an office floor and voted to boost spending by hundreds of millions of dollars.
“The Legislature did not disrespect me; they disrespected the people of New York,” Paterson fumed after learning his budget was treated like rubbish.
Even by Albany’s standards, yesterday’s budget battle reached new lows. Paterson ordered aides to personally deliver his last round of emergency spending legislation after his fellow Democrats refused to accept the bills.
The governor’s documents were left on the floor of the Senate counsel’s office.
Democrats, invoking a state law that had never before been used, claimed that Paterson had exceeded the deadline to amend his budget and that officially receiving his bills could have rendered their own plan null and void.
Noting the unprecedented action, Senate Democratic leader John Sampson of Brooklyn said, “A lot of things haven’t been done before.”
Defiant lawmakers then voted to approve their own legislation to restore more than $600 million in school aid, bringing a three-month budget standoff to an end — only to have Paterson later veto much of the new spending.
The budget pact — the product of a secret compromise between Sampson and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan) — soared through the heavily Democratic Assembly but squeaked through the narrowly divided Senate, where its future lay in doubt until late afternoon.
The Legislature’s action, nonetheless, put to rest the shutdown threats that have captivated Albany in recent weeks.
Paterson’s expected 6,900 line-item vetoes apply only to new spending and language inserted by lawmakers — leaving state government to function as normal.
The fate of the vetoed items would be subject to negotiation between Paterson and the legislators.
“Obviously, I’m concerned” about the vetoes, Silver told The Post. “Obviously, he has the power to veto.”
Vetoed items include:
* A measure reducing to $258 million the governor’s proposed $467 million cut to the city’s share of school aid.
* A slash to $648 million from the governor’s planned education cut of $1.3 billion.
* A restoration of $56 million to community colleges and $190 million to fund some 6,800 legislative pet projects from previous years.
The Legislature’s vote came as a big blow to Paterson, who watched many of his proposals die on the vine.
Lawmakers also rejected Paterson’s plans to let public universities control their own tuition rates, cap property taxes and tax sugar-laden beverages.
Paterson estimated the legislators’ $136 billion budget was $400 million to $1.5 billion out of balance and said he had no choice but to veto the added spending.
“The reality is the day of reckoning in the state has come,” he said after ceremonially stamping a veto on the Legislature’s school-aid restoration.
The Legislature was expected to act today on measures to raise $950 million in revenue through a combination of taxes and fees and other moves. That plus a new nation-leading cigarette tax and other fees would bring to $1.4 billion the total revenue actions in the state budget.