A Stitch in Haste

So the worst-governed state in the Union took a few tip-toe steps back from the budgetary precipice:

Under intense pressure from the public to fix New York's much-maligned government, the State Legislature moved with striking speed and coordination today to pass Albany's first on-time budget in 21 years.

Lawmakers in the Republican-led State Senate and the Democrat-controlled Assembly came together to pass their plan over several objections voiced in recent days by Gov. George E. Pataki, who warned that their spending was too high and would lead to multibillion-dollar deficits.
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The mood in the State Capitol was positively self-congratulatory as lawmakers, in the hallways and during floor debates, praised each other for passing a plan before sundown that they said would help them shed their notoriety as a secretive, do-nothing legislature rated the most dysfunctional in the nation last year by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law.

Funny, when I and my co-workers at my greedy Swiss bank employer show up each morning, we don’t bother “congratulating” each other for being on time. I can’t remember any of my law school professors taking the time to congratulate the students for not being tardy (although I did have a professor in college who locked the classroom door five minutes after each class started – if you were late, you were screwed).

Oh, and by the way, that miraculous on-time state budget includes an estimated $5 billion deficit.

Congratulations.