New York Senate Seeks New Approach to Budget

By Tom Precious
NEWS ALBANY BUREAU

 ALBANY — The Democrats running the State Senate are proposing a novel approach to this year’s budget process: don’t bother passing a budget first before trying to resolve differences in public with the Assembly.

In the upside-down world of Albany, Senate Democrats said Thursday they will dispense with the recent tradition of members of each house passing their own budget alternatives, then going to public conference committees to settle fiscal disputes, mostly in secret.

The Democrats in charge of the 62-member Senate want to try a new approach — going right to the conference committees without having any budget plans in hand.

Republicans aren’t buying it. There is nothing to debate in conference if there is no actual budget, they say. Also, Democrats would be breaking the law by not passing separate budget measures and then resolving the differences in public.

“You failed your duty,” Sen. Kemp Hannon, a Long Island Republican, told lawmakers on the floor Thursday.

The conference committee process— flawed for its scripted ways that still left the major decisions to the three-men-in-a- room approach — was designed during the days of Gov. George E. Pataki as a way to get rank-and-file lawmakers more involved in the budget process and to try to settle spending and tax disputes. A law was even adopted in 2007 demanding the process.

But Democrats on Wednesday said they will not use this approach this year because they are in control of both legislative houses and the governor’s office and, as a result, not that far apart on fiscal issues.

Republicans on Thursday jumped on the notion as another example of Albany becoming even less transparent since Democrats took control in January.

“You can’t just deny the law,” Sen. Kenneth LaValle, a Suffolk County Republican, said on the floor Thursday.

He also noted the conference committee system isn’t arbitrary.

“When we make the laws, we’ve got to abide by the laws,” he said.

But Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith said the goal is to skip passing a one-house budget bill — traditionally used as a means for the Senate or Assembly to commit their fiscal priorities to paper before talks begin in earnest — and go right to the conference process as a way to speed things up, even if there is nothing on paper to debate.

“This is a different approach for difficult times,” Smith said.

But Republicans say that Democrats, who narrowly control the Senate, might not have enough votes among themselves to pass even a one-house budget bill. This approach, they say, is about buying time.

After all the back and forth, though, it wasn’t clear if the new approach would work. Austin Shafran, a Smith spokesman, said it is still unclear if Assembly Democrats are willing to go along.

Meanwhile, the clock is ticking: The 2009 fiscal year starts April 1.

tprecious@buffnews.com