Okay, no, not okay: the New York Times and the Albany Times-Union report dismaying news from the state capital.

Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s aides, including one of his closest advisers, improperly used the State Police to gather information about the governor’s chief rival, Joseph L. Bruno, the State Senate majority leader, in an effort to plant a negative story about Mr. Bruno and damage him politically, according to a report on Monday by the attorney general’s office.

Spitzer aides, chiefly his communications director, Darren Dopp, concocted a false story for why the information was being gathered, saying the governor’s office acted after receiving a press request seeking details of Mr. Bruno’s use of state aircraft, the report said.

Mr. Dopp later made misleading statements about the involvement of the governor’s office in the effort, the report indicates. The report concludes that Mr. Bruno’s use of the helicopters — on trips that included both political and legislative events — was proper.

That just can't happen.

Politics are a good thing. In the present circumstances of divided government and an obstructionist republican majority in the Senate, elected with only 47.1% of the vote, the effort to secure the state Senate for a Democratic majority is a key task for Governor Spitzer. Everything else hinges on it.

What makes this task especially urgent is the complete failure of the old media to move beyond the framing of a personal spat between Joe Bruno and Eliot Spitzer to a discussion of the issues involved. The governor wants campaign finance reform - the republicans said no. The governor wants a brownfield cleanup - the republicans said no to that, too. The legislature passed a ground-breaking marriage equality bill - the republicans went to the golf course. Assemblyman Brodsky wrote an equally ground-breaking telecommunications bill that would, if implemented, transform the upstate economy. The Senate is still at the golf course, and the media are still writing their stories about personalities.

Even in these circumstances, however, we can't have, not as Democrats, not as New Yorkers and not as Progressives, a situation where zealous aides use assets of the state government in an effort to further tarnish Joe Bruno. The man is under FBI investigation - why gild the lily? What also simply can't happen is any misuse of the power of the governor's office, or anything that can be even implausibly construed as such. This because, again, the storyline needs to be, has to be for the sake of our common future, the obstruction of the governor's legislative agenda, not the doings of the governor's aides.

What New York State needs right now is a discussion, a loud and public discussion, of where this state wants to go in the next decade. We need to be talking about the best ways to finally breathe some life into the upstate economy. We need to talk about fixing legislative dysfunction. We need wholesale reform of the public authorities. Our entire state government needs to change.

We can't have distracting spats about the competing misdeeds of Joe Bruno and various aides. To have that would be a disservice to the voters and to our state's future.