Gov. David Paterson (D) may not have mentioned Eliot Spitzer’s name once during his address to the Legislature immediately after being sworn in, but he will be implementing most of Spitzer’s budget in the negotiations over the weeks ahead—unless, as some suggest is a possibility, he elects to pass a basic budget by the March 31 deadline and consider the rest in later bills.

Paterson himself raised this possibility in a meeting last week, said Assembly Minority Leader James Tedisco (R-Schenectady).

Tedisco said he was open to the idea, especially given the change in governors so close to the budget deadline.

“We talked about maybe starting out with a bare bones budget and maybe finishing up the rest later on,” Tedisco said. “That may not be a bad idea to get some things in place which are priorities, and then hold the line on wants that we might have.”

Education and healthcare would be priorities in a basic budget, many agree.

Spitzer had offered a $124 billion executive budget at the end of February. The Assembly and the Senate plans offered in response billions of dollars apart. There is a projected budget deficit of more than $4 billion.

In the wake of the Bear Stearns sale and the lowering of the federal interest rate which happened in the hours before he was sworn in, Paterson insisted in his speech to the Legislature that slicing the budget may be necessary.

“We are looking at the economy that is reeling, and I must say to all of you in government and all of you in business that you must meet with me in the next couple of weeks and adjust our budget accordingly,” he said.

Herman D. Farrell (D-Manhattan), chair of the Assembly Ways & Means Committee, said that he believes Paterson’s experience working on the budget while Senate minority leader and lieutenant governor will help him avoid a multi-phase budget that goes past the March 31 deadline.

“It’s one of the alternatives, but remember, David comes in knowing what’s going on. We’re not really coming in with someone who has to learn anything,” he said.

Nonetheless, Farrell said that the scarce time until the deadline could leave the Legislature without much of a choice. Though 95 percent of the budget in his estimation is “pre-ordained” by spending formulas, he said that the arguments over the remainder could be settled after March 31.

“It’s a couple billion dollars that we’re haggling over,” Farrell said. “In $124 billion, that’s not a lot of money, so if you push those things off. We could do it. I don’t think we will, but we could.”

Much depends on the extent to which Paterson decides to reshape the budget, rather than simply executing the plan Spitzer had put forth.

“The question’s going to be: do we have enough time for him to put his stamp on the budget and still accomplish what needs to be done?” Farrell said.

In their statements after Paterson’s speech, Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno (R-Rensselaer) and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan) both said they hoped and intended to complete the budget in full by March 31.

Silver, however, said that he wants to increase education funding, and does not believe that this could be done without raising taxes—an idea that the Republican majority in the Senate has opposed.

While holding to this idea, he said that he and the Assembly Democrats are willing to rethink some of their budget proposals, as Paterson requested.

“I’m willing to sit with Senator Bruno, with Governor Paterson’s leadership, and review the entire budget,” he said. “The Senate unfortunately came out of the box being political rather than trying to join together in doing something that will be difficult to do, but I think we can do over the next two weeks.”

But without leaving some of the spending to supplemental bills, Senate Minority Leader Malcolm Smith said this might not be possible.

“I think it’s realistic, we just have to get to the point where we agree on what we agree on, and then the other stuff we can go back after the budget is done and make some amendments to it,” Smith said. “But it seemed like there was a willingness on everybody’s part to make the March 31^st date. Equally important for David, it’s important for all of us to restore some of that faith that people have lost in us as a body.”

Though there are two weeks until the budget deadline, Smith said that the leaders will know whether to go with this approach by next week, since they will have to leave three days for the bills to come out of conference committee and three days for the final budgets to print.

“We’ll know when you get to the 25^th, that if we’re not at the point where we’re saying it looks good, then you might have to do a bare bones and then just do amendments on the other side,” he said.

That is a possibility he and the other Albany leaders might have to accept, Smith acknowledged.

“I won’t say it’s okay, like it’s a perfect scenario, but clearly it gets us done on time and allows us a little room to now rethink some of the tougher stuff,” he said. “And I would say, given how volatile the economic times are, we have to be open to all of that.”

But Tedisco warned that voters will not be willing to accept the Legislature failing to pass the whole budget by the deadline. The change in governors in the midst of budget negotiations may make them “more so than in the past, but I don’t think they’re ever forgiving on late budgets,” he said. “They want us to do it, they figure two weeks is probably enough.”

Moreover, he said that the outcome of the negotiations will be the same, no matter whether the deals are finalized in full by the deadline or in supplemental bills in the weeks and months following.

“I think it would be a tremendous coup for him and for us if we show we can get this done in two weeks—because the decisions we make after April 1 are not going to be different from the decisions we make before,” Tedisco said.

Photo by Andrew Schwartz.