Cuomo works to sell tough budget

ALBANY - The Cuomo administration, including the governor himself, is engaging in an extraordinary push to persuade legislators to swallow the medicine of a bad-news budget quickly.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has had conversations with Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos (R-Rockville Centre) and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan) and has talked with leaders of some of the major state-employee unions. And there have been a number of meetings between high-level Cuomo staff and legislative staff to zero in on flashpoints.

Among the issues that have been raised by Senate Republicans is the desire to keep the proportion of school aid distribution at the current level (13 percent for Long Island) and to offset the closure of any upstate prison or youth-detention center with economic development plans for the affected areas. There has been talk of creating a new, less-expensive pension category - Tier 6 - for new hires. And Democrats have expressed strong support for a continuation of rent control.

The governor's thinking, which he wants legislators to buy into, goes like this, according to people familiar with the administration's agenda: Let's do this, and do this early. There's no way to avoid the bad news. We'll pick up the pieces afterward.

Repeating his mantra at a public appearance in Poughkeepsie last week, Cuomo said: "The state's financial situation is dire . . . and there is going to be, no doubt, a period of short-term pain as we make these adjustments. [But] I believe it's for a period of long-term gain."

For example, to help close a $10-billion to $11-billion state budget deficit, the governor is expected to propose thousands of state-worker layoffs, perhaps as many as 10,000.

Cuomo's political leverage over the legislature is that come April 1 - the beginning of the state's fiscal year and the deadline for adopting a spending plan - he can largely bypass it and propose emergency spending bills that implement his policy without lawmakers' input. Thanks to a recent court decision granting New York governors that power, legislators' only options under this scenario would be to pass Cuomo's budget or vote it down and shut down state government.

But time is of political essence to Cuomo, too. He's enjoying a 70 percent approval rating, and interminable budget fights historically have dragged down a governor's popularity, not the legislature's.

The combination of talking gloom and yet engaging lawmakers and staff to find a quick budget solution is smart politics, said Gerald Benjamin, a political scientist at the State University of New York at New Paltz.

"I think he's learning from Spitzer," said Benjamin, referring to then-Gov. Eliot Spitzer's first year in office, in 2007. Spitzer largely browbeat and condemned lawmakers, trying to pressure them to adopt a budget.

"Cuomo is not making the mistake of taking an unnecessarily confrontational posture," Benjamin said. "The fact that there have been no personal condemnations . . . tells you that a lot of private conversations are going on."

Cuomo will unveil a budget proposal in just over a week. It likely will call for at least a $1-billion reduction in school aid, billions in reduced Medicaid funding, elimination and consolidation of some state agencies, and the closure of upstate prisons and youth-detention facilities, according to officials with knowledge of the budget talks.

"I'm expecting, based on the governor's statements, to see a dramatic retrenchment in what government does and can do for its people," said Assemb. Jeffrion Aubry (D-Queens), chairman of the Correction Committee.

At the same time, special-interest factions and political parties are stockpiling millions of dollars for an ad blitz some think will potentially be unprecedented.

On one side is the Committee to Save New York, a pro-business group seeking $10 million in pledges for the campaign. The Conservative Party also is raising money to support Cuomo, who himself could use the $4 million or so left in his campaign coffers.

On the other side, the New York State United Teachers and the Alliance for Quality Education have joined to fund rallies and phone banks to pressure senators regarding school-aid cuts. Efforts from other unions are likely.

"We have never seen a budget war fought the way I think we're going to see this one fought," said Steven Greenberg, a Siena College pollster and a former press secretary for a number of high-ranking New York Democrats.

"February and March this year are going to look like September and October of an election year: a full-scale ground and air campaign by all sides," Greenberg said. "But rather than campaign to elect an individual, this is going to be a campaign for the hearts and minds of New Yorkers."

With Michael Amon