N.Y. Governor Sues Legislature

In a case with broad constitutional implications, Gov. George Pataki filed a lawsuit Thursday against the New York Legislature for passing its own budget over his objections.

The legal action underscored a historic power struggle over which branch of government predominates in the budget process--a politically tinged battle that results in chronically late budgets in the Empire State.

The suit filed in the state Supreme Court in the capital of Albany protests a $79.6-billion austerity budget the Legislature passed Aug. 3, which sliced away more than $4 billion in spending the governor favored.

Court papers charged that the Legislature violated the state Constitution by not acting on the executive budget Pataki proposed before embarking on its own spending plan.

“The so-called baseline budget is an attack on our Constitution that seeks to shift the balance of power back to the days when the Legislature could spend taxpayer money freely without any real check on its power,” Pataki charged.

“The founders of this state did not view our Constitution as bestowing dictatorial power on the office of the governor,” countered Sheldon Silver, the speaker of the state Assembly.

Silver, a Democrat, was joined in his criticism of Pataki, who is a Republican, by Joseph Bruno, the Republican speaker of the state Senate, who usually supports the governor.

“I maintain that the Legislature was well within its constitutional rights,” Bruno said Thursday.

Bruno stressed, as did Silver, that both houses of the Legislature were equal partners with the governor when it came to crafting the state budget--as much a political document as an enumeration of spending programs.

The politics of the austerity budget was clear, lawmakers said. The aim in cutting $4 million in programs Pataki wanted was to encourage bargaining in a subsequent supplemental budget so the governor would approve projects the legislators wanted, especially additional spending for schools, a politically sensitive issue.

Pataki conferred by phone Thursday with the leaders of the Legislature on the supplemental budget, but no immediate progress was reported.

Pataki pledged not to veto the Legislature’s budget, which could result in shutting down state government while courts consider the constitutional issues in the rare suit--the first in the memory of veteran lawmakers by a governor over a budget. New York’s Constitution states that the Legislature must consider budget bills the governor submits before putting forth its own spending. Pataki’s lawsuit cited a constitutional committee report before a 1927 amendment that strengthened the governor’s budgetary power.

The committee stated that, as the “head of the state,” the governor can best explain and defend a fiscal policy to its people and it is the governor who should be held responsible by the people for the success or failure of an economic policy.

Pataki’s suit argues that the Legislature violated the Constitution when it changed appropriations in the executive budget he submitted in January and when it failed to take final action on the governor’s appropriation bills before the lawmakers began drafting their own spending plans.

Pataki is expected to seek election to a third term next year, and the court challenge quickly became an early issue in the governor’s race.

“Gov. Pataki should get out of the courtroom and get back to Albany to provide some leadership in the budgetary process,” said state Comptroller H. Carl McCall, who is expected to be opposed by former federal Housing and Urban Development Secretary Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic gubernatorial primary.