Cuomo Offers Budget With More Trims Than Deep Cuts ALBANY - Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo proposed on Tuesday a $132.5 billion state budget for the coming year, asking legislators to slightly reduce overall spending by cutting human services programs and consolidating state government operations. Mr. Cuomo is seeking to achieve several contentious policy objectives through his budget proposal, including the approval of more rigorous teacher evaluation systems across the state. Mr. Cuomo proposes to withhold a promised increase in state aid to any school districts that did not adopt an evaluation system. His budget would also limit retirement benefits for newly hired state, county, municipal and school district workers, offering them a choice between a pension that is less generous than that for current public employees, or a defined contribution plan invested by individual workers. The proposal for a new pension tier, which the governor said would save state and local governments nearly $79 billion over three decades, sets up an immediate confrontation with public-employee unions, which have vowed to fight any proposed pension changes. After closing a $10 billion budget gap last year, a gulf that led the governor to sharply reduce spending on health care and education and to demand wage and benefit concessions from state workers, Mr. Cuomo managed to put together this year's spending plan more with nips and tucks than with huge cuts. The budget is balanced in part through revisions in the tax code approved by the Legislature last month that create a new higher-tax bracket for the state's highest earners. The budget proposal would reduce overall spending by $225 million, or 0.2 percent. In a written introduction to the spending plan, Robert L. Megna, Mr. Cuomo's budget director, described the budget as "outcome-focused, innovative and fiscally responsible." "This executive budget," Mr. Megna wrote, "demonstrates that New York is now on a new course." Seeking to reduce the size of the state bureaucracy, Mr. Cuomo proposed to squeeze hundreds of millions of dollars from spending by barring new hiring, combining some offices and agencies, and consolidating procurement, information technology services and office space. He also proposed that the state gradually take over yearly increases in Medicaid expenses that are currently shouldered by county governments. But he did not propose a full state takeover of local Medicaid expenses, despite being asked to do so by the state's counties. Mr. Cuomo is also seeking to save hundreds of millions of dollars by reducing so-called local assistance, which is aid from the state to municipalities and nonprofit organizations. The governor would eliminate automatic cost-of-living increases to human services providers, including residential mental health facilities and residences and programs for the developmentally disabled. Mr. Cuomo's budget would also seek to save money by improving monitoring and spending controls on the nonprofit providers. Among his proposals: the governor would limit state reimbursement for salaries at state-subsidized nonprofits to $199,000. That proposal was made in response to a report last year by The New York Times highlighting high salaries at organizations that provide Medicaid-financed services to the developmentally disabled. The governor also proposed closing juvenile justice facilities as part of an effort to move nonviolent youth offenders from New York City out of state facilities upstate and into more cost-efficient city-run facilities in the city. The state had already closed some juvenile justice facilities last year. Mr. Cuomo's budget proposal offered few surprises in the two largest, and often most contentious, areas of state spending: education and healthcare. The budget would honor a pledge Mr. Cuomo made last year to increase spending in those areas by 4 percent, after they were cut last year. The proposed increase in education spending, totaling about $800 million, would be targeted at poor school districts, which should please education advocacy groups, but could set up a battle with Republicans in the State Senate, who have long fought for more school aid to relatively wealthy districts in the New York City suburbs. Mr. Cuomo said any increased state aid would be available only in school districts that approve teacher evaluation systems. The lack of teacher evaluation systems statewide, because of tensions among unions, local school districts and the State Education Department, has imperiled at least $700 million in federal education aid to New York State. Mr. Cuomo said he would give local school districts until January 2013 to get their evaluation systems in place. If that does not happen, he said, the districts would lose their increase in state financing. The statewide teachers" union, New York State United Teachers, has objected to the notion of tying school aid to the teacher evaluation system - long a legal, political and policy morass. Mr. Cuomo's budget proposes to freeze spending on state universities and community colleges, prompting a possible confrontation with the Democrat-controlled State Assembly, which has indicated it will seek to increase financing for community colleges. The State Legislature must debate and approve a new state budget by the end of March to finance state operations in the fiscal year that begins April 1.