Three weeks after his Jan. 1 swearing-in ceremony, New York’s new governor will have to lay out his plan for the 2011-12 state budget, which is expected to have an $8.2 billion hole.

The fiscal outlook gets worse from there.

Even if the deficit next year is closed, the Division of Budget estimates there will be a $13.5 billion gap in 2012-13 and a $15.6 billion deficit in 2013-14.

But the two candidates for governor, Democrat Andrew Cuomo and Republican Carl Paladino, have offered varying measures of detail on how they plan to approach the potentially bruising budget battle, fiscal watchdogs say.

“Both of them want to persuade us that they can make the tough decisions,” said E.J. McMahon, executive director of the conservative Empire Center for Public Policy. “The main difference between them is Paladino seems to want to make it clear that he’s willing to cut anything and doesn’t care, and Cuomo is a holding-the-line guy on spending and on taxes.”

McMahon said Cuomo’s budget proposals boil down to vague pledges of reducing costs and rooting out inefficiencies. Paladino has been more specific, but does not have a mastery of the facts, McMahon said.

“You’re not going to get a complete budget-balancing program out of either candidate at this point in the campaign,” he said.

Cuomo, the current attorney general, has churned out a series of policy books that discuss the state’s myriad problems and his plans to cut down on state spending and “right-sizing” state government. His campaign referred questions about plans for the budget to the policy books.

As governor, Cuomo would seek to eliminate or consolidate unnecessary layers of government and state agencies. Other bureaucratic appendages like non-functioning public corporations that likely do not have significant budget costs would be eliminated.

Cuomo would also push for a state-spending cap that could only be broken by a supermajority of the state Legislature with consent from the governor. He wants to freeze state salaries.

But Cuomo has not said specifically if he plans to cut the state work force or slash education aid to districts. On Medicaid, which makes up the lion’s share of the state budget, Cuomo has called for a “fundamental restructure” of the health-care program for low-income people.

“We must get New York’s fiscal house in order,” Cuomo writes in one of the policy books. “It will not be easy and will require sustained effort, seriousness of purpose and the ability to build a coalition for making the hard decisions the state’s crisis demands.”

Paladino, a Buffalo businessman and favorite of the Tea Party movement, has said he would reduce state spending by 20 percent over two years and taxes by 10 percent in his first year. Those goals will be achieved by cutting state bureaucracy and optional entitlement programs within Medicaid. State worker layoffs will occur under Paladino, said his campaign manager Michael Caputo.

“At the end of the day, our government is bloated and we have too many public employees,” Caputo said. “This needs to be done and, unfortunately, that will cost some public employees their jobs.”

But he has no plans to cut education aid, Caputo said. Instead, savings achieved by eliminating the state Department of Education will stave off cuts to per-student education costs, Caputo said.

“He wants to make sure the students in the state are not deprived of the level of education they deserve,” Caputo said.

Both candidates say they would resist tax increases and borrowing as a way to close the deficit. Cuomo said he would close the gap without raising taxes…

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