Paterson's cojones

Gov. Paterson's decision not to include public-employee raises in his emergency appropriations bill is not just a fiscally responsible and courageous response to a genuine fiscal emergency, but also a politically astute move toward getting a budget passed. That budget may well provide for the raises, but it will also include more spending cuts than the Legislature has up to this point been willing to countenance. Now legislators will be under pressure not just from a lame-duck governor and powerless editorial boards, but from the public-employee unions that have long been the most powerful special interest in Albany. They're going to want to get it done. Paterson, who was seen on the verge of resignation a month ago and almost universally disdained by the Albany establishment, has moved beyond weakness in a kind of jiu-jitsu move to flip the unions from their usual position of fiscal irresponsibility into the only force that can produce a budget this year.