Opinion

Into Sandy’s dustbin

No pay raises for you, New York lawmakers. That’s the word from Albany, via Post state columnist Fredric U. Dicker — who reported yesterday that Superstorm Sandy appears to have derailed a planned lame-duck legislative session during which lawmaker raises were to have been a top-of-the-agenda item.

Not much good ever comes from lame-duck sessions — and if this one remains off the rails, New Yorkers stand only to benefit.

Without a doubt, legislators were looking to line their pockets — which is understandable, given that they haven’t had a raise since 1999, when then-Gov. Pataki bribed them with one in exchange for legislation establishing charter schools in New York. Not a totally unholy bargain, in other words.

Gov. Cuomo, according to Dicker, has been so distracted by Sandy relief and recovery efforts that he hasn’t had time to develop a lame-duck session.

That’s fine, as far as it goes.

At the same time, it’s hard to imagine Cuomo, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos sanctioning pay raises while huge swaths of New York coastline remain choked with hurricane debris.

Can you say “re-election nightmare”?

It is true that Cuomo stands to lose — for the time being, anyway — legislative approval of such priority items as a minimum-wage increase and statewide campaign-finance “reform.” No tragedy there.

A lot of lipstick has been painted on those two pigs, but they’re still pigs — corrosive of New York’s economy and political process, respectively.

Hiking the minimum wage costs jobs at a time when New York’s employment picture is far more bleak than the nation’s, and not looking to improve soon.

And experience shows that a campaign-finance system modeled after New York City’s — which Cuomo seeks — is at best an incumbent-protection scam, as well as an invitation to corruption.

Three bad ideas, then, gone by the boards. Unless something changes.

Here’s hoping nothing does.