Have things changed? NO! The mindset of the leaders is exactly the same as last year. How can we spend more and more… They never, ever look at where can we save, where can we cut, where can we tighten the belt. Spitzer is just as guilty, this budget is up nearly 10 Billion over last year..

The last paragraph really says alot about the sick minds we have running our state into the ground.

Legislative leaders and the governor’s budget division plan to meet on Tuesday to try to reach an agreement on the revenue forecast. If they fail to agree on one by Thursday, the new state comptroller, Thomas P. DiNapoli, an ally of Mr. Silver, will decide the amount.

Knowing that DiNapoli will make the final decision scares me even more and convinces me that the sickness is spreading like the flu..

Lawmakers Raise the Ante in the State’s Budget Process

ALBANY, Feb. 26 — Legislative leaders put a few more cards on the table on Monday in the high-stakes poker game that is the state budget process, insisting that the state will have nearly a billion dollars more to spend than Gov. Eliot Spitzer has projected.

Their predictions begin one of the most important skirmishes in the annual battle over the state budget: the revenue estimate, in which officials try to predict how much money the state will collect in the next fiscal year, which begins on April 1, so they will know how much they can plan to spend.

Governor Spitzer proposed a $120.6 billion budget last month, but the Legislature — which, as usual, wants to spend more than the governor does — predicts that the state will have more revenue coming in, and more to spend. The Assembly, controlled by Mr. Spitzer’s fellow Democrats, is projecting that the state will have $834 million more to spend. And the Republican-led State Senate estimates the extra revenue at $996 million.

Senator Joseph L. Bruno, the Republican majority leader, hinted on Monday that the governor and the Legislature could be headed for another budget showdown, of the kind that became common toward the end of the Pataki administration.

Senator Bruno, who has said that he is troubled by Governor Spitzer’s proposed health care cuts and calls to change the school aid formulas, told reporters that he was concerned that the Legislature was headed for a confrontation with the new governor.

After addressing a conference of mayors at a hotel near the Capitol, Senator Bruno said that he was worried that at this stage of the budget process “people get entrenched, and that they start drawing lines.”

“That’s not how you get a result,” he said.

The Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, a Democrat from Manhattan, who recently clashed with the governor when the Assembly chose one of its members as the new state comptroller, tried to sound conciliatory, playing down any talk of a confrontation and observing that the additional revenue the Assembly is projecting was small, given the size of the overall budget.

“There are a number of areas that we can always use money, in health care and education and job creation,” he said.

Although the two houses of the Legislature are close when it comes to the size of the additional revenue that they believe will be available next year, they arrived at their figures differently. The Senate predicts that the state will end the current fiscal year with an additional $488 million, and will take in an additional $508 million next year. The Assembly predicts that the state will end the current fiscal year with an additional $129 million, and will take in an additional $705 million next year.

Legislative leaders and the governor’s budget division plan to meet on Tuesday to try to reach an agreement on the revenue forecast. If they fail to agree on one by Thursday, the new state comptroller, Thomas P. DiNapoli, an ally of Mr. Silver, will decide the amount.