Gov. David Paterson today said that thanks to the federal stimulus money, which about $2.4 billion will go to New York schools, cuts to education won’t be needed in the 2009-10 fiscal year. Then he went on to say the state needs to tighten its belt.

The money will restore all the cuts made his in budget proposal in December.

“Every cut we made to school districts we will restore in this budget process,” he said during a speech today at the Sequoya Middle School on Long Island.

In speaking to reporters afterwards, Paterson said that any further budget gaps would require the state to reassess the cuts. He also took issue with suggestions from Republicans that a SUNY tuition increase should be used to help the colleges, not help the state close its $14 billion budget gap.

Ninety percent of the $620 SUNY tuition increase is going to the budget gap, but Paterson said in the past 100 percent of any tuition increase went back to the state, not the colleges.

Then he reiterated how dire the state’s fiscal situation is, saying people don’t seem to understand how serious a $14 billion gap is and how the cuts and fee increases he proposed were unavoidable.

“We’re in a drastic situation,” he said. “People finally figured out it’s the worst crisis since the Great Depression.  It may be a worse crisis since the Great Depression if in the next year our governments, state and federal, don’t start addressing it. The federal government is doing it through stimulus, and we have to do it through tightening our belts.”

Gov. David Paterson today announced the next round of town-hall meetings, to be held in Niagara Falls on March 4 and Rochester on Wednesday, March 11.

He will also hold a second student town-hall meeting at SUNY Geneseo on Thursday, March 12.

The Niagara Falls Town Hall meeting will take place at the Niagara Falls Housing Authority’s Doris W. Jones Family Resource Building, 3001 9th Street, Niagara Falls. Doors will open at 4:30 p.m., with the event scheduled to begin at 5:30 p.m.

The Rochester Town Hall meeting will take place at the Rochester Riverside Convention Center’s Lilac Ballroom, 123 East Main St. Doors will open at 4:30 p.m., with the event scheduled to begin at 5:30 p.m.

The second town hall meeting will take place at SUNY Geneseo’s Wadsworth Auditorium, 1 College Circle, Geneseo. Doors will open at 10 a.m., with the event scheduled to begin at 11 a.m.

To attend or submit questions, visit the governor’s website.

   Following a federal court decision last week, legal-rights and mental-health advocates and adult-home residents held a news conference today demanding that the state overhaul the system that places thousands of New Yorkers with psychiatric disabilities in adult homes. They want the state Office of Mental Health to dedicate 25 percent of new mental-health housing for adult-home residents and are urging officials to move swiftly in helping place residents in community settings.

   Last week, a District Court judge rejected the state’s attempts to dismiss a lawsuit filed six years ago on the issue and ordered a trial. Several non-profit groups allege in the lawsuit that the state is violating the Americans with Disabilities Act because adults with mental illness are not being placed in the least integrated setting, meaning independent housing in their communities. In-depth reports by the New York Times brought to light that many adult-home residents in New York City were living in poor conditions.

   “The state has delayed long enough,” Cliff Zucker, executive director of Disability Advocates, said in a statement. Diability Advocates is one of the groups that brought the suit.

   “The governor should resolve this matter by creating the integrated community housing that adult-home residents are entitled to under the Americans with Disabilities Act,” he said.

   Judge Nicholas Garaufis noted in his decision that the state failed to implement the recommendations of the Adult Home Work Group, which was convened by former Gov. George Pataki. The panel said the state should develop plans and a timetable to move 6,000 adult-home residents to alternative housing.

   “We are hopeful that the judge is on his way to finding that New York State has indeed denied residents their just opportunities for deinstitutionalization, sending state hospital patients instead to adult homes rather than creating more appropriate community-based settings,” said Harvey Rosenthal, head of the state Association for Psychiatric Rehabilitation Services and co-chairman of the state Coalition for Adult Home Reform.

   Derek White, an adult-home resident from Yonkers, said the judge’s ruling “provides a light at the end of the tunnel for the many of us who feel we are being warehoused. I’ve waited a long time already. Please don’t make me wait any longer.”

With the state set to receive an infusion of $24.6 billion in federal stimulus aid, Senate Minority Leader Dean Skelos, R-Nassau County, said today that Gov. David Paterson and Democrats in the majority should repeal the $250 million in fees and taxes on health-insurance costs approved by lawmakers last month.

They should also return the $306 million that was swept from the state Power Authority to close the $1.6 billion budget gap in the 2008-09 fiscal year, which ends March 31, he said. He said the money should be used to lower energy costs for upstate businesses.

And they should also eliminate the $620 a year tuition increase at SUNY; the money is being used almost entirely to help close the state’s $14 billion budget gap in the 2009-10 fiscal year, Skelos said.

Skelos reiterated his concerns that the stimulus money will not be fairly distributed around the state, saying talk of building high-speed rail in upstate New York is a good idea but shouldn’t be a substitute for aid that would help the upstate economy now.

“The reality is that high-speed will not happen for another 10, 15, 20 years. It involves billions and billions of dollars,” he said. “So I don’t want the governor to say to the western part of the state or upstate New York, your piece of the action is going to be a high-speed rail, 15, 20 years from now. They need immediate stimulus money in order to start creating jobs in that part of the state.”

Earlier in the day, Paterson knocked lawmakers on WNYC radio for fighting over where the aid will go, citing the state’s dire fiscal condition.

“We’re in an emergency, we’re in a crisis,” he said. “One of the things that is disturbing me about a lot of people right now is they acknowledge that we are in a crisis in the academic sense, but then when you try to respond to the crisis, you start hearing regional and political interests.”

Here’s Democratic candidate Scott’s Murphy’s take on today’s Siena poll:

Republican candidate Jim Tedisco had a 50 percent to 29 percent lead in a Feb. 5 poll from the National Republican Campaign Committee. So now it’s cut nearly in half, to 46-34 percent.

“Murphy has clearly built momentum in just three short weeks with his strong economic message, while voters have increasingly rejected career Albany politician Tedisco’s misleading attacks and his stubborn refusal to support President Obama’s economic policies,” Murphy’s campaign said.

And here’s Tedisco’s take:

He has a 12-point lead and a 14-point lead with independents, which is 25 percent of the district. And that’s on top of the 41 percent of voters in the district that are registered Republicans. Tedisco also has an 11-point lead with women and winning every age bracket.

“Jim Tedisco is in a very strong position but is taking nothing for granted,” said spokesman Josh Fitzpatrick. “We have said all along this will be a competitive special election and the campaign will continue focusing on Jim Tedisco’s proven record of fighting for Upstate families and small businesses.”

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, D-Manhattan, defended his proposal today to put a $2 toll on the East and Harlem rivers bridges as part of a plan to increase payroll taxes to bail out the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

He said his plan is less than the $4.50 toll proposed by the Ravitch Commission.

“I think we put together a plan that mitigates what was asked for in terms of a $4.50 tolling of the bridges, which what was asked for, gives us the opportunity to eliminate the substantial fare increase, eliminate the service cuts,” Silver said. “Ultimately the MTA is the lifeblood of the city and the suburban region.”

While Silver said he has enough support for the plan in the Assembly, some Democratic senators said they would not support any toll increases on the bridges.

“It’s a huge money grab,” said Sen. Carl Kruger, D-Brooklyn. “And the Assembly and this Legislature last year did not support congestion pricing. This is another mechanism to implement congestion pricing.”

Asked about the opposition, Silver said he’d like to see their alternatives.

The Legislature and Gov. David Paterson are expected to reach an agreement next week.

Republican congressional candidate James Tedisco holds a 12 percentage point lead against Democratic candidate Scott Murphy in the 20th District race to succeed Kirsten Gillibrand, a Siena College poll today found.

The poll gives Tedisco, Assembly minority leader, a 46 percent to 34 percent lead over Murphy in a district that stretches from the Hudson Valley to the North Country. A special election is set for March 31 to succeed Gillibrand, who was appointed last month as U.S. senator replacing Hillary Rodham Clinton.

While 20 percent of voters in the heavily Republican district are still undecided, the poll found Tedisco was stronger on six specific issues, although his lead over Murphy on five issues – including the economy, the most important issue for voters in the poll – is in single digits.

Tedisco was viewed favorably by 47 percent of voters and unfavorably by 20 percent, with 34 percent not having an opinion. Murphy had a 29 percent to 10 percent favorable rating, with 60 percent of voters undecided.

“Jim Tedisco currently has a 12-point lead over Scott Murphy in a district that has a 15-point Republican enrollment edge,” said Steven Greenberg, spokesman for the Siena New York Poll. “And one of every five likely voters says that they have not yet made a choice in this special election.”

Murphy has gained 70 percent of support among Democrats, while Tedisco has garnered 63 percent of the support among Republicans, the poll found.

Murphy has a two-percentage-point lead in the northern part of the district, while Tedisco has an 11-point lead in the southern part of the district and is 20 points ahead in the Albany area, which is the largest part of the district.

The poll was conducted February 18-19 to 710 likely voters and had margin of error of 3.7 percentage points.

   With just over a month to go until the Legislature is supposed to pass a 2009-10 budget, mental-health, legal rights and prisoners’ rights advocates are asking legislators to reject a part of the governor’s budget that would postpone a law to prohibit solitary confinement for most seriously mentally ill prisoners.

   Gov. David Paterson proposes implementing the law in 2014, rather than 2011; reducing training; and excluding about 2,400 prison beds from the law’s requirements. The state, which faces a projected 2009-10 budget gap of $14 billion, would save $11 million in 2009-10 and $15 million in 2010-11 as a result.

   “This law is not about money,” Leah Gitter, who has a loved one in solitary confinement, said in a statement. “This is about compassion for people with disabilities who deserve the treatment they desperately need and to which they are entitled.”

   “While we have accepted cuts to mental health services in the community in view of the difficult financial times we are in, we cannot accept any further delays in ending the inhumane suffering of our most vulnerable prisoners with severe psychiatric disabilities,” Harvey Rosenthal, head of the state Association of Psychiatric Rehabilitation Services, said in a statement. Read more of this entry »

   Members of United University Professions continued their drumbeat today against budget reductions at the State University of New York and for allowing the 64-campus system to keep all of the revenues generated by a tuition hike this spring. As the state faces a $14 billion budget gap, Gov. David Paterson wants to reduce state funding by almost the total amount of additional money the higher tuition brings in, and implement other cuts. The 35,000-member union wants the state to increase income taxes on wealthy New Yorkers to increase revenue.

   “The budget knife has gone deep into the bone and we just don’t have anything left,” UUP President Phillip Smith told union members who gathered at the Capitol Tuesday.

   Cuts to SUNY mean fewer faculty members and support staff, courses being canceled and turning away students, he said.

   SUNY’s budget was cut this fiscal year, which ends March 31, and is headed in that direction next year unless the Legislature changes the governor’s budget recommendation.

   ”The fact is you cannot get us out of this problem by cuts,” said Glenn McNiff, a political science and American government professor at SUNY New Paltz and a member of the union’s state executive board. Most of the school’s budget goes toward personnel, he said. Read more of this entry »

Lawmakers did reach one budget deadline today: They agreed that the budget deficit has grown by about $1 billion, bringing the total 2009-10 deficit to $14 billion.

The legislative leaders and the governor’s office met yesterday to discuss the state’s revenues for the upcoming fiscal year. They reached consensus today; they had until March 1 to reach agreement on the size of the budget gap.

The $14 billion gap has been generally agreed to by legislative leaders after the state Assembly estimated that the deficit would grow by $1 billion, moving it up from $13 billion.

“The parties agree that the weaker economic outlook reached in economic consensus should result in a decrease in General Fund receipts of $1 billion when compared with the amount projected in the Executive Budget,” a statement from the governor’s office states.