Cuomo, Legislators Reach Tentative Budget Accord

Gov. Mario M. Cuomo said Saturday that he and legislative leaders had reached a tentative budget compromise that could provide additional aid to New York City and the state’s 700 school districts.

New York City’s fiscal year begins Monday and Mayor David N. Dinkins has said additional state aid is crucial to producing a balanced budget for the financially ailing city.

“The spending will be less than they asked for ($785 million) and more than the proposal I made of $360 million,” Cuomo said of the tentative agreement with Assembly Speaker Mel Miller and Senate Majority Leader Ralph Marino to increase the state budget.

Cuomo said the details of that financing remained to be worked out. That made it impossible to provide a final number on new spending, he said.

“It will depend on what they pay for,” Cuomo said in a telephone interview.

On Friday, New York City laid off more than 10,000 municipal workers as Dinkins and the New York City Council remained at an impasse over how to close a record $3.5-billion shortfall in the city’s budget for the new fiscal year.

Dinkins wants to boost property taxes to help plug the gap and perhaps rehire some of the workers, while council leaders are calling for even deeper spending cuts that could result in 4,800 additional layoffs. The deadline for approving the budget is midnight tonight.

The battle over New York’s state budget has been going on since Cuomo proposed a $52-billion spending plan in January. While the governor’s proposal called for state spending to grow by more than 3%, he also sought sharp cuts in state aid to schools and local governments.

While the budget was due by April 1, the start of the state fiscal year, the Legislature did not adopt a spending plan until June 4. Although Cuomo had called for a $900-million cut in school aid, the Legislature eased that to about $400 million.

Cuomo said the new budget was out of balance by at least $899 million and he vetoed virtually all the extra spending added to his budget proposal by the Legislature. That included more than $500 million in school aid and $145 million in aid to local governments.

On Thursday, the legislative leaders unveiled new bills designed to restore all the spending vetoed by Cuomo and threatened to pass the measures within the next few days. The governor vowed to issue new vetoes against any such legislation unless it was accompanied by offsetting cost-cutting measures or new revenues.

That possible new confrontation prompted a meeting Friday night at which Cuomo, Miller and Marino hammered out the parameters of the tentative agreement.