Mayor Bloomberg said this morning he is becoming increasingly pressimistic that the city and state will get the FMAP funds they had expected to receive from Washington, DC, and he has directed his agency commissioners to start preparing for more cuts as a result.

“Every day it gets less real because every day that goes by it gets less likely that we will get the Medicaid subsidies we want from Washington,” the mayor told WOR’s John Gambling on the duo’s weekly radio show.

“…The New York delegation all say they’re working very hard get it back in and to get it passed,” Bloomberg continued. “Each day that goes by, I think they work harder, but the probabilities go down.”

Bloomberg said the recently passed $63 billion NYC budget includes $300 million worth of FMAP cash for the current fiscal year and another $300 million for next year.

“I have said that if by October…if they don’t come through and there’s no reasonable likelihood of it, we’ll have to take it out and change the budget,” Bloomberg said, adding that he informed agency heads they should “start thinking about the next round of cuts.”

“I want them to at elast start planning,” the mayor explained. “We don’t have to cut back quite yet, but they should start planning for the next round, and I think everybody understands that.”

The state was counting on $1 billion in FMAP money in its budget, which became a sticking point between Gov. David Paterson and legislative leaders during the final weeks of negotiations.

This week, Paterson used the fact that the Legislature had refused to include an FMAP contingency plan in its two-way budget deal as a rationale for his decision to veto some $519 million worth of spending the Assembly and Senate restored to his plan.

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver initially argued a contingency plan would send a signal to Washington that New York could get along without the money. Paterson disagreed, noting other states have already put plans in place.

In the end, Senate Democratic Conference Leader John Sampson, who failed to muster sufficient votes to pass the last piece of the two-way budget – the revenue bill – departed Albany saying he wanted to continue negotiations on a contingency plan. Silver submitted a stand-alone bill to deal with the shortfall, but the governor rejected it.

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