Pols – finally – OK budget

ALBANY — The state Senate gave final passage Sunday night to a $153.1 billion budget that was nine days late.

With the budget adopted, legislators, who could not get paid until a new spending plan was in place, will now get their paychecks.

After a long-sought-after deal was struck between Gov. Cuomo and the Legislature on Friday night, the Assembly finished passing the budget bills Saturday.

The Senate returned for a rare Palm Sunday session and finished its work about 10:30 p.m.

The fiscal year started April 1. Since last Monday, the state had been operating on a two-month extension of last year’s budget.

Democrats and Republicans during the budget debate Sunday had criticisms of the final product.

Senate Deputy Majority Leader John DeFrancisco (R-Syracuse) complained that Cuomo — like other governors before him — stuffed the spending plan with controversial policy issues that held up completion of the negotiations.

DeFrancisco suggested the Legislature move a constitutional amendment that would go before voters to outlaw anything other than spending from being put into the budget.

“Then we can truly say we’re working on (the) budget, not on the policy of the State of New York,” DeFrancisco said.

The biggest policy difference had to do with a push to raise the age from 16 to 18 that teenagers can be charged as adults.

Mainline Senate Democrats complained the final deal doesn’t go far enough.

The Senate Democrats are fractured, with eight breakaway Dems who are in a leadership coalition with the Republicans and another senator, Simcha Felder (D-Brooklyn), who caucuses with the GOP.

With Cuomo touting the new budget as progressive, Senate Minority Leader Andrea StewartCousins (D-Westchester County) disagreed.

She said the deals on “raise the age,” school funding and other issues “may show some progress, but let’s be clear, it is not progressive.”

Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan (R-Suffolk County) said, “I want to be progressive by creating jobs, by creating an economic development structure.”

“Progressive means creating jobs that generate revenue so when people want to fund programs, they have the opportunity to do so,” Flanagan said.

Despite the contentiousness in the chamber on both sides of the aisle, Flanagan noted the budget bills passed overwhelmingly.

“That must mean we’re doing something right,” he said.

Senate Independent Democratic Conference Leader Jeffrey Klein (D-Bronx) called the package a “budget we can be proud of.”

“I think the coalition with the IDC and the Republicans proved once again we can come together, we can negotiate, we can compromise and come up with a budget that is first-rate,” Klein said.

For the seventh straight year, state taxpayer-supported spending will be capped at 2%, even while statewide education spending will grow by 4.4%, or $1.1 billion — including $386 million for New York City.

The budget includes the release of $2.5 billion for affordable and supportive housing, including $700 million for repairs at New York City Housing Authority developments.

Cuomo won his push for free tuition for public college students from households with annual incomes of up to $125,000 — even as CUNY and SUNY were granted permission to raise their tuitions by $200 annually.

The budget also has its share of pork-barrel spending, including another $385 million for the controversial State and Municipal Facilities Program used by Cuomo and lawmakers to fund pet projects throughout New York.