Albany's debate over red-light cameras just got a lot more complicated.

The Common Council's Public Safety Committee will meet again Tuesday to continue to vet the controversial plan to install the devices at up to 20 intersections.

But now lawmakers will have the specter of a $2 million budget gap looming over their decision. That's how much fine revenue Mayor Kathy Sheehan has built into next year's budget even before the council has voted to approve the program — prompting her critics to accuse her of playing power politics.

Sheehan has put the council in the position of rebuffing her camera request at the cost of blowing a large hole in a budget already stitched together with one-shot sources of revenue and a maximum tax increase muted only by a temporary state rebate program.

"If they say, 'no,'" Sheehan said after her first budget presentation Wednesday, "they're going to have to find another $2 million in cuts."

And, in truth, that's only where it starts to get complicated for lawmakers. Because the anti-camera crusaders will no longer be the noisiest crowd in the room.

Enter the Albany Permanent Professional Firefighters Association.

Sheehan's parallel budget plan to idle a South End ladder company to save $1.2 million in fire department overtime has the union's members mobilizing -— something they've been adept at in the past.

It was three budget seasons ago that firefighters, incensed at Mayor Jerry Jennings' threat to shutter a company if the council didn't increase overtime, picketed City Hall and pushed Jennings and lawmakers to hire five new firefighters.

Several-dozen firefighters heckled Sheehan's budget presentation Wednesday night in a starkly less warm and fuzzy scene than last summer when the union endorsed her to succeed Jennings.

Even before her budget hit the streets, the union had begun working with downtown public relations firm Corning Place Communications on web videos to pump up good feelings about the men and women of the department and to float budget alternatives that it says would save taxpayers money without jeopardizing public safety.

Union President Bob Powers said his members now plan to make a spirited case to the public and the council that lives are in danger.

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"I'm sure Vivian Kornegay's phone is going to be ringing a little bit," Powers said Thursday of the newly elected 2nd Ward councilwoman, a Sheehan ally whose South End district includes the Morton Avenue firehouse that is home to Ladder No. 1 and Engine No. 5, which would remain active.

Traditionally the council's changes to the mayoral spending plan are modest, owing largely to the budget's large percentage of fixed costs and the fact that the council lacks its own staff to analyze city finances to come up with alternatives.

That two-thirds of Sheehan's proposed $176.3 million budget is tied up in personnel costs is simultaneously a testament to why it's hard to make a dent, especially for an all-Democrat council with a tender spot for unions, and why Sheehan is targeting overtime in the first place.

It was a landmark event in 2010 when lawmakers defied Jennings and restored $216,000 to his proposed 2011 budget to keep open Public Bath No. 2, another piece of South End public infrastructure closed in the city's lean times.

Even that historic challenge, which prompted Jennings' first mayoral veto after 17 years in office, amounted to just a fraction of one percent of the budget.

If Sheehan's revenue figures for red-light cameras are reliable — a fact her opponents are already questioning — lawmakers this year would need to scrounge up 15 times more than was needed to save the bath.

In other words, history suggests the council can either try to fight the red-light cameras or save Ladder 1 — but probably not both.

Sheehan's office insists this is a coincidence.

"I'll let the people decide if that's what they're doing," 8th Ward Councilman Jack Flynn said.

Flynn, who opposes both the red-light camera plan and the idling of Ladder No. 1, is among the council members who could find themselves in a bind here.

He said he plans to dive into the budget in greater detail this weekend in search of increases worth questioning as the council begins its budget hearings. He and his allies have also asked Sheehan to justify her red-light camera revenue estimates.

"If I had to choose, I think I'd rather keep the fire (company) open. I guess I'd have to vote for the cameras," Flynn said. "Hopefully we won't have to choose."