I really like seeing progress in the politics in Albany but I would not say that things have changed all that much and some of the supposed legislation to change and reform is simply window dressing and minor reforms, but I guess it’s a start.

Workers Compensation saves a little money for employers but is a far cry from what really needs to be done and is still one of the most expensive in not the most expensive in the country. The ethics Bill is another step in the right direction but once again, they are policing themselves, I don’t have alot of faith in that at all. So we need to keep things in perspective, applaud the minor changes but yet continue to push for far sweeping reforms.

The budget dance, redux

Governor Spitzer sat down before a gathering of editorial writers and reporters from around the state Monday and talked about how what he called the dynamic of Albany is suddenly very different since he’s taken office.

“We’ve managed to get things done,” he said.

Mr. Spitzer has a point, too, which he quickly enough elaborated upon. There’s the state’s tougher and much overdue ethics law, reforms to the workers’ compensation system that benefit employers and employees alike, agreement with the Legislature on civil confinement for sex offenders and approval of a better process to implement the state budget.

What’s missing, of course, is approval of the 2007-08 budget itself. And with the April 1 deadline so close, and agreement with the Legislature — the Senate, really — so far away, the governor’s other impressive list of early accomplishments — has an unsightly asterisk attached to it.

The governor wants to make dramatic changes in how state government operates and spends what’s ultimately its citizens’ money. He wants drastic cuts in the rate of growth in Medicaid spending.

How drastic? Well, Mr. Spitzer, with an eye on the calendar, does seem to be more open to negotiation than he was just a week ago.

He wants to spend substantially more money on education and to spend it much more wisely and fairly than New York has in the past. That, too, makes the politics of the annual budget deal making much more complicated — so much so, in fact, that Mr. Spitzer already is clinging to the position, familiar to the point of being tiresome, that it’s more important to get budget policies and priorities right than to get all that done on time.

There, the governor has an ally of sorts in Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver.

“Imitation is the highest form of flattery,” Mr. Silver told the same gathering Monday at the Rockefeller Institute of Government. “I was the one telling you that a good budget is more important than an on-time one for the past 12 years.”

Give Mr. Silver credit, then, for a good line under less than amusing circumstances. Give him that, but still ask him, the governor and Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno what is so unreasonable about expecting a budget that’s prudent, fair, even radical in its changes in state policy — but on time nonetheless.

Mr. Silver also says very few people are hurt by a late budget. He’s not wrong, really, so much as he’s pointing, however unintentionally, to a problem of its own.

As Mr. Spitzer spoke further on Monday, he talked of a post-budget agenda of more capital investment in transportation, housing and energy.

Promising ideas, surely, but not for now. It’s Day 86, and much hasn’t changed.