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Assembly raises Spitzer’s budget by 500 million? It just never ends and the Assembly just continues to throw money around because it is not theirs, it’s our piggy bank, it’s our future and it seems our demise.

The rate of growth cannot continue, but I say this every time there is another budget passed and we never see the details off it until it’s to late. The people still leave the state, the businesses still leave the state and government still continues to grow like a tape worm feeding on the masses.

How much of an increase is there in “member items” this year over last?

PoughkeepsieJournal.com - Senate, Assembly OK versions of New York state budget

ALBANY — While most people’s attention was focused this week on Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s resignation, the state Assembly and Senate passed versions of a roughly $125 billion budget for the 2008-09 fiscal year.

The two budgets are vastly different, with the GOP-led Senate rejecting the so-called “millionaire’s tax” being pushed by the Democrat-controlled Assembly. Increasing the state income tax for people who earn more than $1 million a year would raise $1.5 billion, according to the Assembly.

The Assembly budget would spend a total of $124.8 billion, about $500 million more than proposed by Spitzer. The Senate proposal would spend about $13 million less than the governor’s plan, said Scott Reif, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, R-Brunswick, Rensselaer County.

But with the Spitzer scandal engulfing the state Capitol, neither house had publicly released a financial plan as of Thursday on how its budget would be balanced.

One of the first tasks for Lt. Gov. David Paterson, who will be sworn in as governor Monday, will be to negotiate a budget with the Assembly and Senate. The 2008-09 fiscal year starts April 1, a mere two weeks away. The Assembly and Senate were supposed to start negotiating Friday, but that got pushed back to Monday.

Paterson said he would spend the weekend with financial advisers “hammering out the details of this budget.

“We cannot afford to waste another second. We have a budget that’s due and a deadline to meet,” he said.

The budget was adopted a day late last year. Lawmakers usually add spending to what the governor recommends, but that could prove difficult this year because of the poor economy.

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