A plan to shrink the state budget by $2.7 billion to keep New York from going broke was passed by the Legislature on Wednesday.

The deal hacked $140 million from the already cash-starved MTA.

“This is not good news,” moaned Andrew Albert, a nonvoting rider representative on the MTA board.

He said he feared the move “could put another fare hike on the table earlier than anticipated.”

MTA Board member Mitchell Pally said that while “anything is possible” he believes the agency is “going to do everything possible to keep fares and service at the same level.”

The package also cuts $26.2 million in aid to the city, $53 million from CUNY and another $5.3 million from CUNY community colleges.

The Senate signed off early Wednesday on the deficit-reduction package after Gov. Paterson again ripped the body for not doing enough to fix the state’s fiscal crisis.

Many Assembly members, who voted on the arrangement in the early morning hours, agreed the plan is incomplete but complained they couldn’t get the Senate to go along with more substantial cuts.

Paterson wanted to slash $3.2 billion from the budget with cuts that included more than $1 billion in school aid and health care reductions.

In the end, the Legislature rejected the school-aid cuts and only agreed to about $100 million in health care reductions.

Instead, it took nearly $400 million of federal stimulus funds originally earmarked for education in next year’s budget and put it toward filling the current year gap.

Paterson again said he will cut local assistance money to schools and elsewhere on his own to ensure the state can pay its bills, despite threats of lawsuits.

“Because certain legislators are unwilling to stand up and control spending for fear of the political consequences, I will move forward and implement the tough choices they are unwilling to make,” he said.

Meanwhile, Paterson did get a win after the Legislature passed a bill to create a new and less generous pension tier level he says will save $30 billion over 30 years.

The new system raises the minimum retirement age for state and local government employees outside the city who are not police or firefighters and caps the amount of overtime that can be considered when calculating pension benefits.

E.J. McMahon, director of the Manhattan Institute’s Empire Center for Public Policy, ripped the new pension tier as “an incredible set of special concessions to unionized school teachers in New York” that does little to help the state.

McMahon said while the retirement age for most civilian employees has been raised to 62 from 55, it will be set at 57 for teachers.

And localities will no longer be able to reduce health benefits for retired school district employees unless the union signs off on it in collective bargaining.

The Senate also gave final approval to a bill previously passed by the Assembly to reform the much criticized public authorities.

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