Gov’s got $1.4B left

Pols eye how to spend it

ALBANY — Even as he warns that the upcoming state budget will be tight, Gov. Cuomo is sitting on nearly $1.4 billion in unallocated funds that lawmakers say could be used to help boost funding for their different priorities.

Of the $9.4 billion the state has received since 2014 from legal settlements with financial institutions, $1.37 billion remains unallocated, according to the state controller’s office.

“There’s $1.4 billion just sitting there,” said one legislative source. “We need to have a plan to allocate it. There’s a lot of priorities that need funding, clearly.”

On top of that, legislative sources say, Cuomo (photo) is sitting on billions of dollars — some say as much as $20 billion — in additional money that has been been allocated in previous budgets but has not yet gone out the door.

Some of those funds, they say, can be repurposed to help fund different ideas the Legislature might have.

“There’s cash around, and we can do things,” said one source.

Cuomo spokesman Richard Azzopardi said that, “The governor has consistently held that unplanned settlement funds should be used for one-time major capital projects. We look forward to introducing a fiscally balanced budget as we have done every year.”

But DiNapoli’s office said some of the settlement funds went toward budget support.

On potentially repurposing committed resources, a Cuomo aide said the money is earmarked for projects like upstate roads and bridges, and statewide environmental and housing-related capital projects.

“A member of the Legislature is really suggesting they should undo these worthy statewide projects that they themselves enacted?” the aide asked.

He added that the Legislature itself has about $700 million in unallocated capital money.

lll As he gets ready to roll out his agenda for the year, insiders expect Cuomo, who has been warring with lawmakers, will seek to rely less on the Legislature than at any time during his tenure.

“Just like President Obama had to course-correct after 2010 without the congressional majority, the governor, with an increasingly difficult relationship with the legislators, is likely to lean on projects and agenda items that don’t require a lot of cooperation from them,” said one Albany insider.

Cuomo is set to kick off six regional State of the State speeches Monday, but none will address the Legislature as a whole, as has been tradition.

Leading up to this week’s speeches, Cuomo has highlighted major capital projects, like the reconstruction of JFK Airport, that don’t need legislative approval.

And a number of the agenda items he’s previewed that would need the Legislature — like a free public college tuition plan and an expansion of a child care tax credit — might be difficult for lawmakers to oppose, at least in concept, a source said.

But Azzopardi said that “for the last six years, the governor has advanced agendas that moved New York forward, and the Legislature worked with him because these policies helped their constituents and all New Yorkers. We don’t expect that to change.”

lll As tensions have flared between Cuomo and the Legislature, the governor’s staff will no longer have free access to the Senate chamber during legislative session days.

Until this year, the Senate rules allowed automatic admission to the chamber floor for the governor, the secretary to the governor and any of his “messengers,” which was considered the rest of the executive staff.

But tucked in the new rules adopted last week is a change that eliminates blanket access for the governor’s “messenger,” who will now need special permission from the secretary to the Senate.

A Senate spokesman downplayed the revised rule as a “cosmetic change.”