By Heather Grossmann
DNAinfo News Editor
MANHATTAN — Gov. David Paterson called for the state's union employees to give up their 4 percent raises scheduled to take effect Thursday to help ease the burden of the state’s fiscal crisis.
Legislators were unable to come to an agreement on balancing the budget, causing the state to miss the April 1 deadline, but an extender bill will keep the goverment operating for at least the next two weeks.
Paterson ordered Tuesday that $2.1 billion in school aid be held and hundreds of construction projects halted because the state did not have the money to pay its bills.
“This across-the-board salary increase, which is on top of a 9 percent raise provided over the last three years, is simply not affordable to taxpayers at a time when the State is facing an over $9 billion deficit,” Paterson said in a statement.
The governor backed up his request with stats on the more than 300,000 New Yorkers who have lost their jobs over the past two years and the thousands that have accepted salary cuts and furloughs, seemingly indicating that union workers have been lucky thus far.
“It is a crisis that will require shared sacrifice from every individual and organization that relies upon state funding,” the governor said of New York’s money problems.
