My apologies to the dogs. Governor Paterson, Speaker Silver and Majority Leader Smith have struck a deal on NYS’s budget. In a number of ways, read for yourself, it's not great but it is a significant improvement over the rotten Paterson proposals which were aimed entirely at harming lower and moderate income New Yorkers and protecting higher income residents. Robert Harding writing in The Albany Project picked up the press release in full and the State Senate provided hot links to the actual budget bills for those committed to self-abuse (Thanks to Liz Benjamin who posted the link). The negotiations were carried out completely behind closed doors to the disappointment of reform-minded folk who’d hoped for a cleaner process. See Amy Traub's spirited defense of the broad outlines of the budget on the DMI blog (with which I agree). Also check out the NY Times budget critique favors better spending controls.  read more »

A deal has been struck among New York State legislators and Gov. Paterson to tax some higher income New Yorkers at a somewhat higher rate. See also the report in the New York Daily News. and the Albany Times Union

In my opinion this is a good deal for New Yorkers and a great victory for the complex coalition of labor unions, community organizations and social service agencies which lobbied for months. The irrational, unplanned and wildly harmful budget cuts proposed by Gov. Paterson will largely be avoided. The increased tax rate will produce about $4 Billion dollars which, while greatly needed is not quite enough.

The worst part of the deal is that the two-step rate increase expires in three years which means we will have to re-fight this fight then.

The coalition, One New York: Fighting For Fairness, will now have to face our Billionaire Mayor who proposes taxes on low and moderate income New York City dwellers. Mr. Bloomberg refuses to tax the personal income of higher earning City dwellers -- preferring instead much higher and very unfair sales taxes.  read more »

Note this under calculatedly horrible timing: Shelly Silver has conveniently flip-flopped on reinstating the same commuter tax he helped kill in 1999. This comes in the wake of his slap-down of congestion pricing, a proposal not entirely dissimilar in its effects on the City's fiscal outlook.

Newsday:

State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver supports bringing back the New York City commuter tax he helped eliminate in 1999.

But a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos (R-Rockville Centre), says the GOP is opposed to any tax increases.

Silver spokesman Daniel Weiller says the speaker supports the concept of the tax, but hasn't presented a specific proposal. He had no comment Friday on why the Manhattan Democrat has changed his position.

It's fair to assume that if there's no majority in the Assembly for congestion pricing, that there is no majority for a commuter tax. Not that this matters, because there's also no legislation, and definitely no majority in the Senate. Meanwhile, Democrats are running highly competitive races in a number of outer-borough and suburban Senate districts - Maltese versus Addabbo, Gennaro versus Padavan, Foley versus Trunzo, McElroy versus Hannon, Johnson versus Donno - and now need to contend with the entirely gratuitous impression that Democrats want to raise the taxes of their prospective voters. They don't want that, of course, but subtleties tend to get lost on the campaign trail.

The commuter tax may or may not be good policy. But talking about it, without an actual legislative proposal, without the votes to pass it, with no public support, isn't helpful; unless, of course, the idea is to let Senate Democrats run against the not all that popular speaker, in which case it would be brilliant political ju-jitsu.  read more »

This year, the head of the New York delegation to the convention is, as he has been every four years since 1996, Sheldon Silver, the Speaker of the Assembly.

The man can't give a decent speech to save his life. How well he represents a state on the cusp of real change, given his ironfisted control of the Assembly, with all that implies - abysmal approval ratings, legislative gridlock, unaccountable legislators, the most dysfunctional state government in the union - is open to question. Whether Sheldon Silver is really the face we want to present to the world, when we have real superstars - Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer - really isn't debatable. He's not. If it's possible to exude stasis, Silver has managed it.

The head of the New York State Democratic Party is David Paterson, the governor. He should be the one to lead the party to the next convention.

You can't make this stuff up. The Daily News reports that Speaker Silver and Leader Skelos are assuring their troops that their pet district projects will continue to be funded. Because, you know, budget crisis, whatever, it's an election year.

State lawmakers insist all New Yorkers must share the pain of budget cuts - but that sentiment doesn't apply to them, the Daily News has learned.

Despite a $50 million cut in legislative member items, otherwise known as pork, Assembly Speaker Speaker Sheldon Silver quietly assured his members last week their prized election-year pet projects would still get funded.

"He told us, 'The promises you made for this year will be kept,'" one Democrat said. "How it is done exactly I'm not sure, but I assume he has a rainy day fund."

It would be all too easy to turn this into yet another diatribe on the Speaker. But the problem is bi-partisan and systemic, because Skelos is doing the same thing.

Silver and his Senate counterpart, Majority Leader Dean Skelos, control several large pots of unallocated money that can also be used if needed, they added.

"It's a real cut in that there will be $50 million less in the budget, but it won't impact too badly the groups that get the money or the lawmakers that give it," a Republican senator said.

Meanwhile, belt-tightening goes on apace.

In addition to the member items, funding to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which has called for a new round of fare and toll hikes, was slashed by $789,000. Lawmakers also cut $26 million from CUNY.

So funding to CUNY is cut, but hey - those groups that, say, Serph Maltese relies on in his re-election efforts will still get their pork. The idea of using these legislative slush funds, pardon, rainy-day funds, to offset the losses at CUNY, doesn't yet seem to have dawned on anyone. That would just be too obvious, I guess.