Interesting…. Eagerly awaiting day one….

recordonline.com - Awaiting Spitzer’s ‘Day 1′
Well, about the best that can be said of the abysmal conclusion to the lawmaking year in Albany, and the waning days of Gov. George Pataki’s last term, is that they didn’t do any damage.

Lawmakers and Pataki didn’t accomplish much, either, but so be it. In New York, not doing damage is progress.

Pataki was elected with such promise in 1994, the outcome of that election was a delicious surprise to the establishment, the media and to then-Gov. Mario Cuomo.

But now, Pataki’s 12 years end with a whimper, foiled by Democratic Speaker Sheldon Silver and the governor’s own timidity. Like a poker game that’s set to go all night, lawmakers were ready to outlast the governor and they did, even sacrificing a hoped-for pay raise.

Pataki had a deadline. Lawmakers, led by Silver, could and did wait him out. They’ll deal with the next governor, Eliot Spitzer. The upshot was that no one left Albany last week with anything. At least taxpayers’ wallets didn’t get lifted.

What, pray tell, should Spitzer fix? He says “everything changes on Day 1.” Here are some of the things he should change:

# New York has vast numbers of boards and commissions that should be abolished. Many of them are mostly ceremonial — but the ones that have real duties often operate in the shadows. Let’s get rid of them, or most of them, and keep only those we truly need. And for those we keep, we need some transparency and accountability.
# New York’s road system is broken. We do not need any more vast superhighways across northern and western New York. We need road improvements where the people and cars are, and that’s here and south to the city and Long Island.
# In Albany, pushing paper around is acceptable as its own virtue. What if the Tappan Zee Bridge had been about to fall down? Years and years and millions of dollars later, we’re barely past step one on the way to a replacement. Meanwhile, NJ Transit is moving like gangbusters on building a new tunnel under the Hudson River.
# We don’t need pork barrel spending granted under cover of night, as lawmakers now do. And they’re proud of it, which makes even less sense. We need transparency. For that matter, we need less spending period, a completely foreign concept.
# The state’s debt — a good chunk of it incurred under those shadowy commissions — is out-of-control. It cannot be sustained. Billions and billions of dollars, and more all the time, and we’re on the hook for it.
# New York has an alarming tendency of turning over big decisions to the employees — usually unions — and this is puzzling. Call me crazy, but usually the bosses decide the direction of the enterprise. I suspect it’s rather like that at the places where most of you work, too.

Put another way, should the hospital workers’ union and the teachers’ union have absolute veto power? No, but they do. Do they have important input to offer? Sure, but veto power seems a bit much.

Pataki’s early activism in reining in state government dissipated over time, and by this year seemed to be absent entirely. The most egregious flaws of Albany continued apace.

If Spitzer, dragon-slayer of Wall Street excess, means what he says, he’s going to be awfully busy come Day 1. We shall see. Changing Albany might be like changing the leopard’s spots.