State parks will get an 11th hour reprieve after all, Gov. Paterson announced this morning.

The Democratic executive said legislative staff had worked through the night and “appear” to have forged a compromise to save 55 state parks and historic sites the from budget ax in time for the Memorial Day weekend.

“If the legislators come in this morning and find this is to their liking … then they will probably pass the needed legislation and the parks will be open,” Paterson said during his weekly appearance on WOR 710AM.

Senate Democrats – anxious to avoid any more outrage over the parks closures – had announced a deal yesterday only to have Paterson publicly announce that a resolution had not been reached.

Details offered only sketchy details about the latest proposal. He said it involved a $74 million cut to the Environmental Protection Fund. The cut would help Paterson find the $11 million needed to pay for park operations.

He also said some proposal to regulate the disposal of consumer electronics would also be part, an element that seemed – at least at first blush – to placate environmentalists’ anger over the EPF raid.

Paterson said the protracted battle over the parks did not bode well for the overall effort to close an estimated $9.2 billion budget gap. He said the state, which is nearly two months into its 2010-11 fiscal year, would likely not have a budget deal by June 1.

“The legislature has made the tough choices to my satisfaction to enable us to open the parks,” Paterson said. “The real tough problem is we are still anywhere from a billion to a billion-and-a-half dollars apart.”

(Source: NY Post)