Paterson delivers passionate pitch on jobs
Touts plans to spend state, federal funds on projects across WNY
Gov. David A. Paterson got booed Thursday while delivering a strike on the first pitch during opening day in Coca-Cola Field.
Earlier however, he received plenty of cheers in Niagara Falls as he announced $72 million in road and bridge projects for Western New York.
At the end of his cross-state odyssey as cheerleader for the federal stimulus package and defender of the just-adopted state budget, the governor repeatedly listed his top priority as jump-starting a New York economy stung by Wall Street’s woes more than any other state in the nation.
The best way of immediately putting about 1,700 people back to work, he said, is to use stimulus money to fund transportation projects ranging from fixing the Robert Moses Parkway in Niagara Falls and repairing the Scajaquada Expressway bridge over Delaware Avenue in Buffalo, to resurfacing Transit Road in the towns of Lancaster and Cheektowaga. With continued state projects and federal programs, the governor said Western New York construction work will total $180 million through next year.
“What’s most important is that we recognize the whole object of the stimulus package is get these projects out the door as quickly as possible,” he said in IBEW Hall on Niagara Falls Boulevard in Niagara Falls.
“We’re not going to waste this opportunity when so many people are looking for jobs.”
During a local radio interview, he also discussed his proposal to legalize gay marriage. But most of his swing through Western New York concentrated on the new budget. He said even though the federal stimulus package prevented some of the draconian cuts originally threatening health care and education, enough reductions were enacted to result in “flat spending.”
Although the budget includes about $8 billion in new fees and income tax increases, Paterson insisted that cuts enacted by the Legislature, which he said have been overlooked, reflect “a different culture of spending in Albany established this year.”
And if hopeful signs of economic recovery continue, he emphasized, balanced budgets should continue if spending is restrained.
“If we can just stay flat from here on out, we will be able to capture the discipline that will be important to bring us out of this crisis,” he said.
If the economy does not rebound, Paterson said, more difficult decisions lie ahead.
Paterson defended the budget as the best possible spending plan under difficult circumstances, claiming that increased spending stems mostly from needs spawned by recession.
“The only thing that drove spending up wasn’t the Legislature,” he said. “It’s that we are mandated [to spend on] more people seeking Medicaid, more people needing unemployment insurance and more people requiring food stamps.”
He pointed to $6.6 billion in various cuts in response to a gap four times bigger than any previous deficit in history. And he said he recognized that more problems lie on the horizon once the flow of federal stimulus funds ends, calling it the “last unknown quality of the budget this year.”
“The stimulus will get us through this year, and the stimulus will get us through next year, but what happens in 2011 and 2012?” he asked, pointing to cutbacks that he predicted will reduce projected deficits for those years from $60 billion to $11 billion.
“If the Legislature can maintain the discipline that was demonstrated this year, if it just stays flat, it won’t be a problem,” he said.
“And in growing the economy, . . . the stimulus package will have tided us over,” he added.
Paterson also defended his dealings with public employee unions, whose leaders continue to blast his plan to lay off 8,900 state workers unless the unions agree to significant concessions.
He said he has no desire to lay off workers, especially when so many New Yorkers are out of work. But he also said he has no choice, without such concessions as giving up raises.
“If they would like to come back to the table, we would certainly be willing to do that,” he said. “But we haven’t heard any suggestions from the union as to how we can cure this problem, other than leaving them harmless. I don’t know how anybody can be held harmless with this state, and country, in such dire fiscal straits.”
At the union hall, the governor was surrounded by construction workers in hard hats as well as by Sen. Charles E. Schumer, Reps. Brian Higgins of Buffalo and Louise M. Slaughter of Fairport, Niagara Falls Mayor Paul A. Dyster, State Sens. Antoine M. Thompson of Buffalo and William T. Stachowski of Lake View, and Assemblyman Dennis H. Gabryszak of Cheektowaga.
All spoke in favor of the stimulus plan and its potential effects, with Schumer emphasizing that failure to enact the spending that resulted in Thursday’s announcement of so many projects would have been tantamount to President Herbert Hoover’s reaction to the Depression.
“The reason we are here is the guys here in the hats,” Schumer said, pointing to the construction workers, “so that they will be working, working, working. Jobs are the whole idea of this stimulus package — plain and simple.”
Paterson also expanded on his plans to reintroduce legislation legalizing gay marriage, which he had announced Wednesday on an Ithaca radio station.
“I don’t think it can pass the Senate,” Paterson told WBEN Radio’s Sandy Beach.
The bill passed last year in the Assembly, but died in the Senate. With Democrats now running the Senate, gay rights groups have said this was the year for the state to adopt the measure. But not all Senate Democrats support the bill, meaning that, to become law, Republican lawmakers would need to vote for it. That is uncertain.
Paterson said he would encourage the Senate to let the bill come to the floor despite uncertainty over its fate. The Legislature almost never allows a vote unless a bill is certain to pass.
“Let’s just put it on the floor, let it get voted up or down — and we can get back to other issues,” he told the radio station.
“I’m going to put the bill out and let people just fight it out,” he added on an earlier WGR radio interview.
Tom Precious of The News Albany Bureau contributed to this report. rmccarthy@buffnews.com
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