NY Capitol News reports that there may not be a complete state budget by the March 31 deadline.

Actually, they're reporting that some budget items that don't need to be decided by the start of the new fiscal year may be put off until later. The idea is to make decisions regarding education, heathcare, and other "basic budget" items now, and deal with the less vital decisions later, when there is more time to figure out just where we stand fiscally.

The problem is, where we stand fiscally is on sand.

New York, like most states, has a constitution that requires an annual balanced budget. The theory is that we need to force our "leaders" to be responsible. It's a nice theory, but it doesn't work. It doesn't work, because our "leaders" have not behaved responsibly. During the economic boom years, when the money was flooding into state coffers, nobody in power spoke out about finding a way to plan for a future date when that flood would become a stream, and then a trickle.

While the actual budget outcomes are not really known yet, some of the winners are: Long Island school districts got lots more money, Westchester school districts didn't. Indeed, when the Assembly voted on the Education budget, all Westchester Assembly Members (mostly Democrats) voted "No". Monday's NY Times features a good story by Danny Hakim and David Herzenhorn which lays out how LI won and Westchester lost. The victorious statements of the Alliance For Quality Education & Campaign for Fiscal Equity are after the jump.

In addition, advocates of smaller class size in New York City (including me) were successful, it appears in that some language requiring smaller classes made it through the final budget. UPDATE: I ran into UFT Lobby and political people Monday morning who were jubilant and absolutely certain that the class-size language would result in actually smaller classes. NYC will have to build classroom space to accommodate the new classes. There are, unhappily, no fixed targets for class size reduction, so this battle may have to be fought over and over again.

Queens Assembly Member Rory I. Lacmann, who, with Education Chair Cathy Nolan, led the charge on behalf of smaller class size, reports as follows:

" Over Mayor Bloomberg’s fierce resistance, NYC will be required to reduce its overcrowded class sizes under the budget passed today by the state legislature (A.4307-C), a priority of the Assembly throughout the budget negotiations. Specifically, NYC is required to execute a plan to reduce class size over five years, to be enforced by the New York State Commissioner of Education."

Does this mean that your children and mine will actually get smaller classes?

The big Medicaid battle is at the center of the political dispute over this year's budget process. But I'd like to take a look at a few other items in Joe Bruno's budget proposal. Working backwards through Danny Hakim's excellent article in today's Times, let's consider three issues with the Senate's budget:

1) Transparency. As Hakim reports:

The Senate budget also rejects money for 21 new state workers to oversee compliance with campaign finance regulations and cuts financing for Project Sunlight, a plan by Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo to build a public database to track the activity of lobbyists, donors, elected officials and special interests.

This is as depressing as it was predictable. Bruno's minions are making a shameless play to check the growing trend towards greater openness and accountability in Albany. The Brennan Center has already jumped on this, and we should expect to hear more from good-government advocates. At least the Assembly, to its credit, seems ready to leave these important efforts alone.