For a week ending last Sunday I was on vacation in Oregon — getting beaten by my sister at Scrabble, drinking outstanding German beers at my brother-in-law's brewery, making pancakes with my niece and nephew, and skiing Mount Hood with my son.
Meanwhile, New York's 2014 budget process was inching toward its March 31 deadline. Did I miss anything? Not much, except for the utterly predictable defeat of the DREAM Act in the state Senate and Cardinal Timothy Dolan's visit to Albany to press for, among other things, a chunky tax credit to incentivize private donations to schools — be they public, charter or religious institutions.
A few Capitol denizens asked if my trip was ruined by worry that the budget would pass in my absence. Oh, how I laughed.
Despite the recently claimed power of the governor to insert his full budget plan into any post-deadline budget "extender" — a tool that gives the executive an even stronger hand during the first three months of the legislative session — we are far more likely to see late budgets than early ones in the years to come.
In three decades, the budget has never been early by more than two days. Indeed, I probably could have stuck around Portland for another week and deprived myself of nothing more than a series of completely worthless Q&A sessions following leaders meetings in Gov. Andrew Cuomo's office.
In my experience, no one emerging from that room to face a phalanx of reporters has ever said anything remotely interesting — because what's the point of a closed-door meeting if someone's going to blab about it into a forest of microphones seconds after you wind up? For real news the leaders will utilize the ornate Red Room, where there are better sightlines and the governor can be front and center.
There are several reasons why the budget will never, ever get done more than a handful of days before the April 1 deadline, beginning with the general tendency of large bureaucracies to work to deadline, not ahead of it.
Second, legislative leaders and their conferences derive significant political nourishment from a large population of lobbyists and advocates, who in turn draw their salaries from clients that will employ every available minute to press their cases. An early budget robs them of precious time — otherwise known as billable hours.
Legislators, of course, have their own wallet-based reasons for working right down to the wire: the per diem of $172 for every day or smidge of a day spent in Albany. March is the most lucrative month on the legislative calendar; this year, it included 17 scheduled session days, which means that Assembly members and senators could take in at least $2,924 in addition to their base salary and the bonuses, known as "lulus," they receive for serving in leadership positions.
Just three weeks after Assemblyman William Boyland Jr. was convicted of stealing more than $70,000 in bogus per diems, the largely faith-based system was back in the news Wednesday, when Assemblyman Bill Scarborough was greeted at the door of his room at the Howard Johnson Inn off Central Avenue (where the average rate for a single guest hovers around $60) by FBI agents who told him his home and offices were about to be searched — and could they please have his cellphone?
In a memorable exchange with reporters, the Queens Democrat insisted on his innocence and said the feds were interested in his per diem bills, which in recent years have been among the Legislature's most whopping. (He missed the opportunity to tearfully declaim, "If it's a crime to love spending time in the great city of Albany, then haul me off to jail.")
But the most significant reason for budgeteers to wait until the last minute was best expressed by Macbeth, a Scottish politician with a keen desire for advancement: "If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well it were done quickly."
The faster the state budget can go from nebulous closed-door debates to settled law with no one having time to pick at it, the better for everyone involved in crafting it — especially the four men in the proverbial room.
Whether or not running down the clock works for the rest of the 19 million or so people who'll have to live with that fiscal plan is a different matter.
cseiler@timesunion.com • 518-454-5619