Paterson: Time To Cut Back
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- April
- 4
Gov. David Paterson criticized state lawmakers for secret negotiations and efforts to increase spending, despite the state’s struggling economy.
As a result, he has gotten the state Legislature to agree to stay in Albany over the weekend to get a budget deal done. The deadline to pass a 2008-09 budget was Tuesday.
Paterson said the $124 billion budget spends too much and too much of the discussion is done in private. Budget conference committees ended on Sunday and there hasn’t been a public leaders meeting in weeks.
“New York should be among the leadership in economic development and the way we are going to get there is we are going to have to make our economy and our budget reflective of the circumstances around us,” he said at a news conference today.
Many lawmakers expected to go home today and resume talks on Monday, but Paterson is putting public pressure on them to stay here and get a deal.
This entry was posted
on Friday, April 4th, 2008 at 1:09 pm by Joseph Spector.
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Jay Gallagher has covered Albany for Gannett News Service since 1984 and has been Albany Bureau chief since 1989. He`s a native of the Boston area and likes to point out that in this millennium, the score is Red Sox 1 championship, the Yankees 0. 
Cara Matthews has been a statehouse correspondent in the Albany Bureau since August 2005. Prior to that, she covered Putnam County government and politics at The Journal News for nearly five years. Before that, she worked at newspapers in Connecticut and covered the state Legislature for one of them. 
