Time travel, Albany style

I know many of you, especially who live outside New York, move onto other things when you expect a blog entry to be about state government. But give this one a shot. It involves time travel.

Today Gov. Paterson was asked by reporters, as he frequently is, about progress, or lack thereof, in reaching an agreement with the Legislature on a new state budget.

"We're going to have to exert a greater effort to get the budget done on time,'' he responded.

This temporarily nonplussed the gathered press corps, who of course were aware that the budget was due on April 1 - two weeks ago, for those keeping score.

But Paterson continued on, oblivious, talking as he usually does about the need for more budget cuts, the state's critical cash-flow situation and maybe even pension buyouts for state workers, as well as the Legislature's chronic inability to make tough choices.

"This is an issue of courage,'' said Paterson, who will be watching this year's elections from the safety is the sidelines, since he said he's not running for another term.

But even someone with no interest in state government can see that it's hard to put together a spending plan when you don't seem to even know when the deadline is.