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Albany To Hold Special Session On Sunday


Governor David Paterson is expected to call state lawmakers to a special session on Sunday to deal with the budget, after legislative leaders announced on Saturday that they reached a two-way budget deal that rejects many executive proposals.

The agreement reached by Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate Democratic Conference Leader John Sampson restores $600 million to state school aid. Another $683 million in health care cuts that were proposed by Governor David Paterson were also restored, including $46.8 million in Medicaid cuts.

Legislative leaders said a portion of the restored state school aid would go for “meaningful property tax relief,” but Paterson has previously opposed such a proposal.

The agreement does not address how the state will raise revenue for the restored aid, but Democratic sources said that does not need to be immediately figured out.

The state Legislature is expected to pass the bills and present them to the governor. As they were originally the governor’s bills, the bills will immediately become law. Paterson is unable to veto them and can only strike out items that he does not like.

Sources told NY1 that the bills do not have many changes from Paterson’s original versions.

The governor can force a special session on Sunday evening, but cannot force the Legislature into voting on anything. Lawmakers could quickly gavel in and out, like they did during last summer’s State Senate coup.

By Saturday night, it was not known whether the governor’s office would try to challenge the legality of the restored state funding.

As of Saturday, New York’s state budget had been overdue 87 days.

(Source: NY1)



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