HAPPY TALK IN ALBANY

Gov. George Pataki offered a feel-good assessment of the state of the state
yesterday when there was little to feel good about. Mr. Pataki painted New
York's budget crisis as something that had no relation to his own policies,
and suggested that it could be resolved without undue pain to the
taxpayers. The governor, a Republican, even had the chutzpah to lecture the
Legislature about the need for being "frank, honest and clear about the
scope of the crisis." It was a challenge he certainly did not meet with
yesterday's speech.

Sounding more conservative than he did during his re-election campaign, Mr.
Pataki made his main pitch for no new taxes. That felt less like a promise
than an attempt to make the Legislature find the revenue to bridge a $2
billion deficit in this year's budget and a gap of maybe $10 billion in
next year's. The governor's plan is to cut his way out of budget troubles,
and to use irresponsible gimmicks like borrowing against anticipated
proceeds from the tobacco company settlements. Until this week he was also
undoubtedly expecting help from Washington. But President Bush failed to
come to the rescue on Tuesday in his speech about the economy.

Mr. Pataki notably failed to mention any help for localities that are
drowning in costs imposed by the state. Unless they get aid, any taxes he
avoids in Albany will show up in the overstressed cities and counties.

When it came to new initiatives, the governor revived many of his
moss-covered favorites, good ideas that are always tucked into the end of
this speech and never seem to go anywhere, like campaign finance reform and
revamping the Rockefeller drug laws. With the state government broken, his
only proposed fix was to promise voters the right to put their own ideas on
the ballot through petitioning. This is an attractive-sounding concept that
works out to be terrible in reality, as most states saddled with the
initiatives have found out.

To be fair, it would be hard for the governor to come up with many new
programs at a time of such financial peril. A promise to push for more
renewable energy over the next 10 years was one suggestion that sounded
promising. But over all, Mr. Pataki's big thought for the new year seems to
be that if he says everything will be fine, that will make it so.