CAPITOL — “The best chance is through the Senate,” said Schenectady Free Health Clinic Executive Director Bill Spolyar on Wednesday about its prospects for state funding this year.

Sen. Hugh Farley, R-Niskayuna, agreed, saying he hopes his initiative to include $350,000 for the clinic will be in the enacted budget this year.

The Senate and Assembly passed one-house budgets Wednesday, but Farley said the Senate package was not itemized down to the level at which the health clinic would appear. The Assembly budget did not include funding for the clinic, said Assemblyman Richard Gottfried, D-Manhattan, chairman of the Health Committee.

One piece of bad news is that the clinic does not appear eligible for operating funding under the Health Care Efficiency and Affordability Law for New Yorkers (HEAL-NY). Claudia Hutton, spokeswoman for the state Health Department, had previously suggested it would be, as reported March 4 in the Gazette. But Hutton said this week she has now confirmed Spolyar’s discovery that HEAL-NY would not pay the clinic’s operating costs.

That means, Budget Division spokesman Jeffrey Gordon confirmed, that there is no money in the executive budget proposed by Gov. Eliot Spitzer that the clinic could get hold of for day-to-day operations. However, Gordon said the Budget Division would be negotiating with the Legislature over the next days and weeks, and did not rule out its being funded in the enacted budget, which is due April 1.

Under Spitzer, Hutton said, the health commissioner no longer has discretionary funds that were previously used to fund the clinic, and Spitzer’s attempt to shift resources to primary care comes through the Medicaid reimbursement formula.

Spolyar said the clinic treats only uninsured patients, mainly the working poor, and so does not get funding through Medicaid. He said the Spitzer budget does not appear to contain money that free health clinics, such as Schenectady’s, could use for operations.

Gottfried did not rule out the Assembly eventually passing the clinic funding if it is first passed by the Senate and then by a conference committee.

Farley spokesman David Smingler said the clinic funding could be itemized at the conference committee level. Or, he said, if the Assembly and Budget Division agree, $1 million could be added statewide for free health clinics, with the understanding that Schenectady was going to get a portion of that money.

An Assembly Democratic staffer confirmed that the $1 million statewide figure was under consideration.

The clinic operates with volunteer medical and nursing staff, but relies on state funding for other expenses. It also accepts voluntary contributions, which Spolyar said can be sent to the Schenectady Free Health Clinic, 600 Franklin St,. Room 205, Schenectady, NY 12305.