ALBANY — For the second week in a row, rank-and-file lawmakers were sent home Thursday as

negotiations to erase the state's $3.2 billion again failed to narrow differences over

proposed cuts to education and health care.

Despite earlier threats by Gov. David A. Paterson to keep lawmakers at the Capitol until

the impasse is broken, lawmakers made a mad dash Thursday afternoon for the Thruway for a long

weekend at home. The plan is for them to return Monday to try it all over again.

The legislative flight was condemned by Senate Republicans, who said a number of Democrats

even slipped out of town Wednesday night.

"We're here to work," said Sen. John DeFrancisco, a Syracuse-area Republican. By nightfall,

though, only a handful of lawmakers remained.

The Senate Republicans released what they said were $2.5 billion worth of deficit-closing

actions already agreed to by the GOP and Senate Democrats. The paper deal includes no cuts to

education, despite claims by Paterson that most schools can afford the nearly $700 million in

total reductions he wants districts to make in the middle of their school years.

Most of what Senate Democrats and Republicans say is their own deal already was proposed by

Paterson, including pain-free actions like "sweeping" funds from off-budget state accounts to

the general fund and a tax amnesty program.

The governor is very far from being on board with the Senate effort to hold education

harmless, which, together with health care, is 55 percent of the budget.

He said he is willing to compromise the more than $1 billion he wants to cut in those

areas, but can't do that when senators are insisting on zero cuts to schools.

"We have to have representative cuts in those two areas," Paterson said after a Thursday

evening meeting with legislative leaders.

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who has said some districts could absorb midyear cuts,

said school cuts are still possible. "Everything is on the table," he said.

But Senate Democratic Conference Leader John Sampson disagreed. "It's not going to happen,"

he said of school cuts.

A number of health cuts are still in the mix, including what sources say will be a

disproportionate hit on upstate nursing homes.

A plan being considered would affect state payments for Medicaid care provided by nursing

homes proposes to cut payments to upstate nursing homes by $96 million, or 61 percent of the

total nursing home hits, even though upstate has 42 percent of the population. Buffalo-area

nursing homes would be in line for $15 million in cuts, with Our Lady of Peace in Niagara

County and the Erie County Home getting the deepest reductions.

"It's not sustainable," Thomas Quatroche, a senior vice president at Erie County Medical

Center, said of nearly $3 million in cuts to the Erie County Home this year and $11 million

that could happen next year if cost-cutting plans in Albany proceed. He said the nursing home,

which has 550 beds, is 95 percent Medicaid patients. Its total budget is $40 million annually.

"It would be a devastating hit to the home and we'd have to significantly downsize the

home," Quatroche said.

He added that nursing homes owned by hospital corporations already have taken hits because

officials look to the least profitable areas for cutbacks, which are the long-term care

facilities.

"I don't know where these people would go," he said of Medicaid patients in a

climate that has other health corporations looking at possible nursing home closures. "These

folks have no other place to go because none of the other facilities will take Medicaid

patients or they are full," he said.

Legislators insist they are discussing alternative ideas.

"We're working on that," Sen. William Stachowski, D-Lake View, said of the nursing home

cuts. "We're trying to help. Everybody's going to get a cut, but we're trying not to decimate

anyone."