Paterson makes $1.6B emergency budget move

[The Northerner]

Unable to get the Legislature to agree on how to address a $3.2 billion deficit, New York Gov. David Paterson on Sunday said he's taking $1.6 billion worth of temporary, emergency measures to cover the state's December bills.

While he continues to negotiate, he may have lost some leverage. Several lawmakers have sought the executive branch actions to provide more time to wait for revenues to rebound after Jan. 1 and to avoid Paterson's cuts to powerful special interests in public schools and hospitals.

"I feel that we have to start making the deficit reductions on our own, hoping the Legislature will join us," Paterson said in a teleconference with reporters. "This is the point where other states went off the cliff. This is where they should have acted and didn't."

He referred to even larger deficits in California and other states where officials were forced to borrow long term, miss payments that hurt their credit rating, issue IOUs, layoff workers, release prisoners early and close most libraries.

Read more: http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local-beat/Paterson-Makes-16B-Move-To-Shore-Up-State-Budget-78093212.html

[Historic NY]

1. Its time to send ALBANY a message YOUR FIRED!!!!!!!!!!!!.

The clowns on both sides of the aisle have pushed the state to the brink. They snidely come up with catchy schemes to raise fees which are taxes. There has been nothing but partisan bickering from both sides. It amazing they can still keep printing their political fliers with our dough touting their non-accomplishments.

[notesdev]

2. Gotta give Paterson some props

He could have swept it under the rug until the bottom fell out, like some states have done and are doing. In assessments of state fiscal positions, NY is rarely if ever ranked the worst. Not that the situation is good, but you'd think if it got this far in NY, the states that are worse off should be ahead of the game in confronting it.

[IrateCitizen]

3. I agree 100%. I think he's done a decent job in difficult circumstances.

Of course, Gov. Patterson is regularly ridiculed and derided in the media. But I have liked his straightforward approach in dealing with the fiscal crisis that NY faces. When he started his "town hall meetings" about a year ago on this subject, he kept asking, "When did it become such a bad thing to tell the truth?"

The problem that Governor Patterson faces is that he is trying to govern in a society that does not want to hear the truth, and especially does not want to confront it head-on. We would rather have politicians like those in the Assembly and Senate who regularly sweep difficulties under the rug and divert our attention from the 6' high pile under said rug to the new draperies covering the windows.