The also complained they don’t have enough money to meet their needs.
Have they ever considered we may not have enough money to meet our needs? I do not expect to see any change this year at all. I see no hope for New York until the power structure there is disassembled. What a pity and more people flee to greener pastures south.
New York lawmakers to reconvene today to work out compromises.
ALBANY — Lawmakers worked to hammer out details of a new state budget on Saturday, but they failed to reach agreements on areas such as spending for higher education and reducing medical-malpractice insurance premiums.
The also complained they don’t have enough money to meet their needs.
Legislators discussing spending on colleges threw up their hands and said Assembly and Senate leaders would have to resolve their impasse.
“There are insufficient grounds for us to go forward,” said Assembly Higher Education Committee Chairwoman Deborah Glick, D-Manhattan.
“I concur,” said Senate Higher Education Committee Chairman Kenneth LaValle, R-Suffolk County, as the panel they head gave up on attempts to agree on how to spend $90 million more for the State University of New York, the City University of New York and other higher-education programs.
Lawmakers struggled to strike enough deals so they can pass a complete budget, expected to total about $124 billion, by the start of the new fiscal year at midnight Monday.
Other talks were continuing in private to find more money to spend above the roughly 4 percent hike that legislative leaders agreed to earlier this week.
A tax increase of as much as $1.50 on a pack of cigarettes is a possibility, according to Assembly Health Committee Chairman Richard Gottfried, D-Manhattan.
But tobacco lobbyists warned that any hike over the current $1.50-a-pack tax ($3 in New York City) would mean a big jump in the sale of bootleg cigarettes sold without tax stamps.
The talks over higher- education spending blew up when Glick insisted that more of the budget restorations go to the City University than LaValle was willing to accept.
