The State Legislature’s skittishness and unwilling-to-make-the-hard-choices state in the state budget process is the subject of a Journal News editorial.

“With election season right around the corner, the skittish and unwilling-to-make-the-hard-choices state Legislature got a gift from Gov. David Paterson: He presented lawmakers with a do-or-die, one-week budget “extender” that included $775 million in health-care cuts. Because budget extenders — appropriations to keep state offices open in the absence of a formal budget — are emergency measures not open to the usual negotiations, legislators had to vote to accept the bill and the cuts, or vote to shut down the government.

It was an easy out and they took it, grumbling about gubernatorial blackmail even as they voted late Monday to accept the budget extender, cuts included. When the health-care industry, which held noisy protests before the vote in Albany, looks to target lawmakers in November, the lawmakers can throw up their hands and say, “We had no choice!” And it will be true. But that is so only because they have steadfastly refused to make any hard decisions to address the state’s $9.2 billion budget gap for 2010-11. The budget was due on April 1. The government limps along, sustained by a series of budget extenders.”

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