ALBANY -- Gov. David Paterson and more than 200 legislators met in emergency session Tuesday to take on what they agreed was a fiscal crisis of historic proportions and — did nothing.

A 90-minute meeting of the Democratic governor and legislative leaders was filled with accusations and some name calling. But they failed to approach any agreement on Paterson's proposed $5 billion in spending cuts or any alternatives, some of which surfaced for the first time in the leaders' meeting.

"They swung and missed," said Blair Horner of the New York Public Interest Research Group.

In the end, Senate Republican leader Dean Skelos achieved what he wanted against the Democratic governor, the Democratic speaker of the Assembly and the Democratic Senate leader who is in line to control that chamber's majority beginning Jan. 1.

Skelos got Paterson to suspend any cuts in the current budget, which has a projected $1.5 billion to $2 billion deficit, until January. Skelos had said the midyear cuts shouldn't be made without having the governor's full proposal for the 2009-10 fiscal year in hand.

Paterson plans to present that budget to the Legislature Dec. 16, a month early because of the fiscal crisis he says will create $47 billion in deficits over the next three years because of the meltdown on Wall Street, too little return of tax revenue from Washington, and what he describes as years of overspending by the state to benefit special interests.

For more on this story, see Wednesday's edition of The Citizen.