Opinion

Andrew Cuomo, superstar?

Gov. Cuomo doesn’t have to be a weatherman to tell which way the wind is blowing: It’s coming right out of Wisconsin, and he ought to trim his political sails to take full advantage.

Who knows where he might end up?

Certainly, the news from Wisconsin bodes unhappily for America’s biggest, baddest political bully — the public-employee cartel.

Unionists from across the country, including New York, went all in to remove budget-cutting Republican Gov. Scott Walker from office — and lost.

Big time.

So while public labor scrapes itself up from the ground, now is the time for other reformers to seize their opportunities.

Cuomo has spent the last 17 months showing governors from both parties that it’s possible to fix a financially and politically broken state. And he’s done it with a fearless (if low-key, relative to Walker) approach to the public-employee unions that have traditionally owned Democratic and Republican politicians alike in this state.

Now he needs to ramp up his game.

He should spend a big chunk of the political capital his earlier successes have earned him and move unambiguously for the repeal of the 30-year-old Triborough Amendment, which requires public employers to maintain all elements of an expired union contact — including automatic “step” pay increases — after it expires.

This law gives unions an incentive to resist negotiating structural changes to their contracts, since the status quo will be preserved even if there is no contract.

The amendment, in other words, is an all-but-impregnable roadblock to reform — and the unions well know it.

Winning Triborough repeal would accomplish three things:

* It would even the playing field between unions and government at all levels in New York.

* It would force local governments, in particular, to negotiate hard on behalf of the taxpayers — without the excuse that Triborough ties their hands.

* And it would demonstrate for all to see that labor’s corrupt grip on public life in the Empire State has been broken.

This won’t be easy. New York is not Wisconsin — more’s the pity.

Moreover, the moment will quickly pass; Cuomo needs to build on the success he has had with the unions to make it clear that while they have a proper place in the debate, they no longer own it.

Scott Walker did that, and he’s now a political rock star. Cuomo could — should — do him one better.