ALBANY, N.Y. -- The state, New York City and the 57 counties outside the Big Apple will get $273 million in the coming days from the tobacco industry, state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer announced Saturday.

Under the structure of the 1998 settlement states negotiated with the tobacco industry, a second payment is due in April. The total for 2003 is expected in the neighborhood of the $956 million state and local governments received in 2002. In the previous two years before that, governments in New York got $772 million and $715 million respectively, under the settlement. However, in 2004 the annual total is likely to fall off drastically, with a single payment annually. The settlement is designed to compensate taxpayers for the smoking-related health costs incurred over the years through Medicaid and other public health-care programs. With the latest amount, due by Jan. 10, the state and local governments will have gotten about $3 billion of an anticipated $25 billion over the first 25 years of the settlement from the tobacco companies. Governments will stop receiving dual payments starting in 2004. After the April funds transfer this year, the tobacco companies aren't obligated to pay again until April 2004. At that point onward, New York governments will get annual payments each April. "It is important that all counties begin planning now for that decrease," Spitzer said. The latest checks will be divvied up under the same formula as previous payments: 51 percent for the state, 27 percent for New York City and 22 percent for counties outside the city. The size of the payments is determined by a base amount agreed to by the tobacco companies in 1998, plus additional money based on shipments of cigarettes nationwide during the year, inflation and other factors. The state's share under the latest payment will be $139.88 million. Gov. George Pataki has asked the state Legislature for authorization to borrow up to $4 billion against future receipts under the tobacco settlement as a way of closing an anticipated $2 billion shortfall in the current fiscal year and covering future budget gaps. The Democrat-controlled Assembly has been cool to the Republican governor's proposal. Several cash-strapped counties have made such "securitization" arrangements to get their tobacco money sooner.

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