Official: State budget would lay off 10-15G

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo reiterated Thursday that he's open to doing away with the hugely unpopular MTA payroll tax - if another way can be developed to fund the mass transit system.

"It is a very onerous tax . . . " Cuomo said after delivering a speech at Marist College in Poughkeepsie. "People are complaining about it on Long Island, the entire metropolitan region. And I've said from the beginning, I understand the need to finance the system. If we can find a better way to do it, I'm open."

Cuomo had made similar remarks during the gubernatorial campaign. MTA officials did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

The State Legislature imposed the levy - 34 cents for every $100 of payroll - on every business in the MTA's 12-county service region as part of a $3-billion rescue package for the agency in 2009. Long Island's 13 towns and two counties paid more than $7.2 million in the tax in 2009, officials said.

Cuomo's comments came as he prepares to deliver his first state budget in less than two weeks. People with knowledge of the governor's thinking said Thursday that the budget could include 10,000 to 15,000 layoffs.

Cuomo would not directly answer a question about it during his appearance in Poughkeepsie Thursday, saying only, "The state's financial situation is dire. We've been spending too much money for years and it has to stop. It has to stop now."

Through a spokesman, Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos (R-Rockville Centre) did not address the layoff number, but said given the state budget deficit, "everything must be on the table." A spokeswoman for Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan) said Silver was "committed to addressing New York's fiscal crisis."

Cuomo, a Democrat, has been warning lawmakers of a bad-news budget, but some observers said the layoff number could be a warning shot meant to lean on unions at the bargaining table and cow state legislators into quickly negotiating a state budget.

Talking about a massive layoff number long before the unveiling of the budget is "both substantive and strategic," said Douglas Muzzio, a political scientist at Baruch College. If the governor sticks to his word about not raising taxes or borrowing, he must reduce the workforce, Muzzio said.

Finalizing a number is where the strategy comes in. "It's not unusual to exaggerate the number of cuts, but when you're talking $10 billion, you don't have to exaggerate much," he said.

Contracts covering the nearly 200,000 state employees expire April 1 - the date by which Cuomo and lawmakers are supposed to enact a new budget.

Public Employees Federation president Kenneth Brynien issued a statement warning that "any suggestion of reducing the state workforce by 10,000 to 15,000 would not only cripple the delivery of essential services, it would have a chilling effect on the state's economy and undermine the state's fragile recovery."

The largest state-worker union would not comment on the layoff number. "We don't have any real sense of what's reality here," said Stephen Madarasz, spokesman for the Civil Service Employees Association.