GOVERNOR PATAKI'S WISH LIST

Gov. George Pataki offered New Yorkers a broadly appealing menu of
promises yesterday on education, the environment, gun control and
reform of state drug laws. But as veterans of Albany wisely cautioned,
the governor's seventh State of the State address is simply a speech,
perhaps even the launching of his campaign for re-election in 2002.
His state budget, which should give dimension to these proposals,
appears with all its promise -- or potentially deflating details -- in
the next few weeks.

Still, there were heartening ideas in this year's package. Mr. Pataki
promised to "dramatically reform" New York's unfair Rockefeller drug
laws, which have packed the state's prisons with nonviolent drug
users. Genuine reform of these draconian laws is long overdue. Another
law enforcement measure -- creation of a special police unit to stop
trafficking of illegal guns across state lines -- would add muscle to
the governor's stringent gun-control law enacted last year.

The governor sought to add to his environmental record by pledging to
push for reauthorization of the state's vital Superfund program to
help clean up toxic waste sites and by announcing the acquisition of
26,000 more acres of protected Adirondack lands. But he shied away
from assuming state responsibility for assessing or coping with the
skyrocketing prices for electricity last summer and for heating oil
this winter.

With Florida's voting fiasco a fresh memory, the governor also
suggested, correctly, that it was time to look at balloting problems
in New York State. He is expected to propose a commission to study
ways to improve both the voting process and the counting of ballots.
Mr. Pataki showed bad faith, however, in omitting mention of his own
proposal on campaign finance reform, which was announced with little
fanfare in 1999 but did not even make his long wish list this year.

The governor made potentially dramatic proposals in education,
including a pitch for mayoral control of schools and a plan to revamp
the state's school aid formula. He would consolidate the 11 current
funding categories, which are so complicated that few school officials
fully understand them, into one "flexible, easy-to-use aid category."
But skeptics will need to read the fine print of the budget to see
whether this actually benefits New York City's students, who have been
shortchanged in the state education formulas for many years.

Mr. Pataki too often leans over backward to help his political friends
in the upstate regions, and this year's opening legislative address
was no exception. He proposed a series of tax cuts and economic
incentives for businesses and the elderly, mostly upstate, that sound
worthy but deserve careful scrutiny, not least because the state might
not be able to afford such expenses if the economy cools.

The governor's opening salvo gives only the barest outline of this
year's legislative possibilities. At this stage, the rhetoric sounds
promising but the reality will emerge only when he provides the
budgetary details.