ALBANY — Inside the Capitol, lawmakers and advocates on Tuesday will begin poring over the tens of billions of dollars in Gov. Andrew Cuomo's proposed state budget.
But across the street in City Hall, all eyes will be on about 0.005 percent of it — or $7.85 million — that will make or break city finances this year.
Cuomo's promise of the money, announced by Mayor Jerry Jennings in October when he unveiled his own 2012 budget, provided a key bridge that enabled the city to balance its books without either a property tax increase for homeowners or a second consecutive year of steep job and program cuts while at the same time giving raises to some workers who had gone three years without them.
On Monday, a Jennings administration official said the mayor and his aides "still feel confident" that the money will be in the governor's budget, even if some details, like how it will be repaid, are not yet clear.
The stakes are indisputably high: Jennings' budget also projected using more than half of the city's reserves, with not enough left behind to fill the gap should the state not come through.
Jennings' initial plan floated in 2010 on the eve of Gov. David Paterson's final budget asked for a five-year, nearly $40 million advance on the state's 33-year agreement to make payments in lieu of taxes to the city on the Empire State Plaza.
Cuomo also would not say whether a Tier VI pension package was included in the budget. Cuomo did, however, say the state's pension system is in dire need of reform.
Last year, Cuomo pushed hard for a Tier VI plan that failed to pass through the Legislature.
"It's hard to reform a pension system," Cuomo said. "It affects many employees, many powerful public employee unions and politically it's difficult to get legislators to do this."
He said cutting the taxpayer burden to pay for what he called "unsustainable" state and local government costs for public pensions is essential.
"It's hard to reform a pension system," he said. "It affects many public employees, very powerful public employee unions and, politically, it's hard to get the Legislature to do."
Though Cuomo refused to say whether the proposed budget would decrease spending for the second consecutive year, he said the state's finances were in better shape this year than in 2011.
"The work we did last year will pay dividends this year," Cuomo said. "Last year, from just a budget point of view, where we had a true crisis — we had a $10 billion deficit. We had chaos.
"We have a much better budget situation on the numbers, we have a better working environment and I think a lot of the management changes we made last year have redounded to our benefit."
Cuomo would not speculate on whether he would use emergency spending bills to push through his budget if it faces opposition in the Legislature.
As someone who has famously proclaimed, "I am the government," Gov. Andrew Cuomo must find the governor's limited role in the state's schools particularly galling. So, for the last two weeks, Cuomo has made it clear he no longer will stand on the sidelines while others run education here.
In his State of the State speech and in comments on Martin Luther King Day, Cuomo plunged into the school wars and poised himself to take on the state's teachers unions. He is expected to continue this campaign in his budget address today.
If the governor, who has a relatively skimpy record on education, gets more involved in schools, what exactly will he do? Who will benefit? And who will lose?
The governor heralded his entrance into education disputes in his State of the State speech two weeks ago. In that address, he announced he would appoint an education commission and that he would serve as a lobbyist for the state's children who, he declared have no one representing them.
Because of the timing, most attention focused on what Cuomo and his commission might do on teacher evaluations. The day before, State Education Commissioner John King had announced he would suspend federal funding for failing schools for districts that had not reached agreement on a new teacher evaluation system. This could cost New York City, one of the 10 districts affected, $60 million for 33 schools.
The plan would increase the minimum retirement age and the number of years before someone can qualify for a pension. It would also hike worker contributions and make it more difficult to boost pension benefits through the use of excessive overtime.
Cuomo’s concept would save the city and state tens of billions of dollars over the next three decades, the sources said.
Last year, Cuomo introduced a pension reform plan late in the legislative session that did not include city workers, but it was rebuffed by the Legislature.
Despite the governor’s sky-high favorability rating — 73% in a Siena College poll out Monday — sources said adding the plan to the budget would maximize his leverage.
“Remember the politics here,” Cuomo said Monday, without tipping his hand to his plan. “It’s hard to reform a pension system. It affects many public employees, very powerful public employee unions, and politically it’s difficult to get the Legislature to do this.”
The public worker unions have said they will vehemently oppose any pension changes, arguing they have already given ground. The move comes two years after the state created a less generous pension tier, and a year after the unions accepted concession-laden contracts.
Meanwhile, the governor’s proposal for a $132 billion budget would cut total spending by $200 million, a source said. The state operations portion of the budget, which does not include federal funds, would grow by just under Cuomo’s self-imposed 2% cap.
His blueprint closes a $2 billion deficit and hikes education and health care spending by 4% without raising broad-based taxes and fees.
He’ll seek to merge various state agencies while cutting the funding of others up to 2.5%, sources said.
And sources said he will use his budget to call for the creation of a state health care exchange to comply with federal health law.
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney holds a 23 percentage point lead over his closest rivals for the GOP presidential nomination, according to a Gallup survey of registered Republican voters nationwide.
The tracking poll, taken between Jan. 11 and Jan. 15, shows Romney with 37 percent support. Tied for a distant second are former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich with 14 percent each, followed by Texas Rep. Ron Paul with 12 percent support.
The survey showed Texas Gov. Rick Perry with 5 percent support and Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, who dropped out of the race Monday and threw his support to Romney, with just two percent support.
Romney, the winner of the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary, has seen a steady, double-digit increase in national support since the January 3 caucuses. Gingrich, by contrast, has been in freefall, dropping from 37 percent support in December.
Santorum, who won the backing of a group of prominent social conservatives over the weekend, reached 18 percent support following his near-win in Iowa but has since dropped to 14 percent.
A new CNN/ORC International poll, also released Monday, showed Romney and Paul statistically tied with President Obama in a general election matchup. Mr. Obama was favored over Santorum by six points and over Gingrich by nine points.
Romney has edged up since a Post-ABC poll in mid-December before the campaign’s first votes were cast in Iowa and New Hampshire, boosted by a sharp increase in his perceived electability and a steep falloff in national support for Gingrich.
With his rivals closely bunched and well behind him, Romney has obvious advantages, reinforcing an aura of inevitability that surrounds his candidacy. Nearly six in 10 Republicans see him as the party’s best shot at defeating Obama.
Just a month ago, Romney held a 10-point advantage over Gingrich as the most electable candidate in the field. That lead has swelled to a whopping margin of 57 percent to 10 percent. In the intervening weeks, millions of dollars in negative ads hit the former speaker in Iowa as his support plummeted there and nationally. Gingrich, who declared late last year that he was likely to be the nominee, finished fourth in Iowa and New Hampshire.
Overwhelmingly, Republicans expect Romney to be the party’s nominee. Even about two-thirds of those who do not support him for the nomination see him as the one most likely to be atop the party’s presidential ticket.
Romney also has consolidated support on issue No. 1: the economy. For the first time in the campaign, he has a double-digit lead over his rivals when it comes to dealing with economic issues; he beats everyone on this measure by 2 to 1. And he is up 13 points when it comes to handling the federal budget deficit. Exit polls in New Hampshire and Iowa showed overwhelming percentages of voters focused on these two issues.
Republican presidential frontrunner Mitt Romney appeared rattled after being challenged by his rivals in a televised debate over his failure to disclose tax returns and the millions of dollars spent by his supporters on negative ads.
The debate on Tuesday night, at times raucous, came only days before the potentially decisive South Carolina primary, possibly the last state in which Romney's main opponents can feasibly stop his run for the Republican nomination.
Although Romney enjoys an 8% poll lead over his nearest rival, Newt Gingrich, his uncomfortable performance watched by millions of viewers, many of them from South Carolina, may have cost him votes.
The number of candidates in the debate, the 16th so far, has been reduced to five, following the departure of Jon Huntsman earlier in the day. The main task of Gingrich and Santorum was to rein back Romney and both succeeded, leaving him at times looking hesitant, uncertain, irritated and overly defensive.
If Gingrich, the clear winner on the night, was to wound Romney again on Thursday night in Charleston, South Carolina, in the final debate before the primary, the outcome may yet be in the balance.
The debate was conducted against a noisy background, with 3,000 partisan Republicans in the hall, booing and heckling, saving applause for their favourites, mainly Gingrich and former senator Rick Santorum. Romney, viewed as too moderate in right-leaning South Carolina, appeared to have failed to fill the hall with his supporters.
The Bay State governor has come under increasing fire since winning in Iowa and New Hampshire, and he spent the debate defending his stance on gun control, decrying third-party negative ads, and even indicated he’d release his tax returns after Texas Gov. Rick Perry and debate moderators pressed him on the issue.
“I have nothing in them that suggests there’s any problem and I’m happy to do so,” he said.
The issue of Super PAC ads loomed large. Former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania grilled Romney over whether prisoners should be allowed to vote after a pro-Romney Super PAC ran ads blasting Santorum on the issue.
“This is actually my time. Answer the question,” Santorum said as the former Bay State governor delayed answering. Romney finally said, “I don’t think people who committed violent crimes should be allowed to vote again.”
Romney said he supports taking down the ads if they’re inaccurate, adding that a recent Gingrich ad is “probably the biggest hoax since bigfoot.”
The high-stakes debate — sponsored by Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, and the South Carolina Republican Party — came hours after Romney’s campaign picked up further momentum as former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman backed out of the presidential race and threw his support to Romney.
Former U.S. Speaker Newt Gingrich has conceded that Romney will likely win the nomination if he can win in the Palmetto State.
