The most wonderful time of the year

It's budget season in Albany, which has always been one of my favorite times of the year. This year looks like it will be the usual mixture of fuzzy math, posturing and bare-knuckle politics.

Gov. David Paterson will propose next week how he intends to close a budget gap anticipated to be about $7 billion. He is already making dire predictions about budget cuts and maybe some higher taxes on cigarettes and maybe some other increased levies. Wall Street, he warns, won't bail us out this time.

Lawmakers can be counted on to to absolutely horrified that the governor would propose any cuts or any higher taxes or fees. Most of them, of course, will be against higher spending in general, while fighting hard for more money for schools, hospitals and other state programs that have effective and well heeled advocates. They'll urge a reduction in those always popular straw men, waste and bureaucracy.

Public-employee unions, whose members are scheduled to get a 4 percent raise in April, will decry any attempt to save money by cutting jobs or deferring raises.

If the budget debate follows the pattern of the last couple of decades, there will be much posing about the need for spending restraint without any commitment to meaningful changes, and something will be cobbled together at the last minute that will allow the state to stagger along, with its high taxes and other fiscal problems intact.

Maybe the most interesting thing to watch will be Paterson trying to champion less money for education, health care, roads and other purposes while at the same time trying to build support for his long-shot election campaign. The usual way politicians make friends and influence people is by signing checks and cutting ribbons, not touting a balanced budget.