Opinion

The Gov gets gimmicky

Say this for Gov. Cuomo: He sure does keep a neat desk.

His $136 billion-plus, no-fuss, no-muss 2013-14 budget, presented Tuesday, avoids passionate support in favor of tepid opposition. It’s a bloody bore, but just the sort of plan to be expected from a smart chief executive looking for a smooth cruise to re-election — and to a sunny future somewhat south of frosty Albany.

As for New York’s most pressing problems — eh, maybe not so much.

The document is a pale shade of the take-charge plan he put forth in 2011, following years of high-drama advantage-taking that had turned the budget process into the policy wonk’s version of a Saturday Night Live skit.

This time, when the special interests came waddling to the trough, they found they’d been put on half-rations.

They didn’t like it, but Cuomo prevailed — and produced an honestly balanced, on-time budget for the first time in decades.

It was nothing if not responsive to New York’s needs — and it redeemed, among other things, the governor’s pledge to put a cap on upstate and suburban property taxes that Cuomo had correctly said were “crushing” homeowners.

But what that budget, and its two successor plans, lacked was any mechanism for controlling the equally “crushing” spending requirements that Albany imposes on its local governments.

And without such so-called “mandate relief,” the original tax-cap becomes more meaningless with each passing month.

And therein lies the essence of what’s wrong with this new budget — and, unhappily, with the governor himself.

He’s flash and he’s dash, but where there once were signs of substance, today all that’s apparent is conniving cynicism.

Take what passes for “mandate relief” in the new budget. Cuomo proposes, in effect, to let localities mitigate their pension obligations by borrowing against amorphous future pension “savings.”

Whatever they may be, and whenever they might arrive.

It’s a plan so audacious — and so irresponsible — that even one of the governor’s top political deputies can’t abide it.

“I don’t think borrowing is the most fiscally responsible way to approach this problem,” said Syracuse Mayor Stephanie Miner, Cuomo’s hand-picked Democratic State Committee co-chair.

“This problem has to be examined in a responsible way if we are to prevent municipalities from going over the fiscal cliff,” she continued.

“Isn’t this what got states like Illinois in trouble?” she asked — knowing full well that the answer is a resounding “yes.”

Cuomo has never been one to brook dissent — so look for a detailed Miner recantation very soon. (Or her abrupt disappearance from New York’s political hierarchy.)

Even so, it will remain that this gimmick is disrespectful of a constitutional requirement that pension funds be actuarially sound — and if it catches on, the consequences will be felt far beyond Syracuse.

But long after Cuomo has taken his leave.

Alas, the irresponsibility doesn’t end with pension shenanigans.

Cuomo also genuflects to his future by proposing an economically destabilizing 21 percent hike in the state’s minimum wage; dedicating not a penny to development of the state’s considerable hydrocarbon reserves — and generally avoiding overt conflict with the special interests that he so adroitly short-sheeted in his first budget.

Again, it’s a plan dedicated to his interests and not to the economic well-being of the Empire State.

Cuomo is certainly not the first promising governor to be knocked off-course by ambition.

But America is full of cynical manipulators seeking higher office. How much better for Cuomo would it be if he just hunkered down and did the job he was elected to do — and which he knows in his heart needs to be done.

How much better for New York, too.