Senate GOP Puts Forth Budget Plan

ALBANY - Senate Republicans are proposing a new plan to end the state's 20-year streak of late budgets, which they plan to take up tomorrow during a special session.

The proposal, introduced late Sunday, is a variation on a budget reform bill that passed both houses of the Legislature earlier this year, only to be vetoed by Governor Pataki last month.

The Senate is also considering overriding Mr. Pataki's veto, which would give the Democratic leadership of the Assembly several options if they choose to return to the Capitol before the end of the year, a spokesman for the Senate GOP, John McArdle, said yesterday.

Like the earlier budget legislation, the Senate's new bill would push the start of the fiscal year back one month, to May 1, and automatically impose a contingency budget, based on the previous year's spending, if the Legislature has not approved a new spending plan by the deadline.

Under the new bill, however, the contingency plan would be submitted by the governor and approved by the Legislature in January, at the outset of budget negotiations.

And after the contingency budget takes effect in May, it would be up to the governor, and not the Legislature, to initiate any additional appropriations.

These and other changes address some of the top concerns that Mr. Pataki expressed when he vetoed the earlier bill.

Mr. McArdle said the proposal was based on negotiations between the legislative leaders and the governor's office over the past month. "We are comfortable with it - or at least we are to the extent we're going to take it to our [Republican] conference," Mr. McArdle said.

Whatever the Senate does on Wednesday will be moot if the Assembly chooses not to return to the state Capitol by the end of the month. As of yesterday, Assembly officials said they had no plans to reconvene before next year.

"This issue is too important to lose an opportunity to fix the broken process that has resulted in 20 years of late budgets," Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno said in a statement issued yesterday.