What planet is Governor Pataki on? That’s the question we were left with yesterday after watching his State of the State address. The governor is facing a multibillion-dollar budget gap, in a state that already has the highest state and local tax burden in the country. The editorialists at the Wall Street Journal are warning that the state, under Mr. Pataki’s leadership, is slipping into “a French-style decline.” Mr. Pataki responded yesterday with a speech in which he announced an executive order “requiring all state agencies and authorities to begin using nontoxic cleaning products that are free of harmful chemicals.” And in which he vowed, “We will add 20 new bird conservation areas to the 28 we’ve created since 1995.”

Bird conservation areas? Nontoxic cleaning products? We’ve got nothing against birds, but Mr. Pataki makes himself appear unserious when he goes down this road. For one thing, there’s no good evidence of which we are aware that the chemicals that have been used to clean the state offices are toxic. By suggesting they are, Mr. Pataki opens the state up to nonsense lawsuits by anyone who ever set foot in a state office. “It’s ridiculous,” said Jeff Stier, associate director of the American Council on Science and Health, whose funders include some chemical firms. “This is driven by an ideology, a fear of chemicals that’s not grounded in science.”

While Mr. Pataki is fretting about cleaning chemicals and bird habitat, the state’s real problems are going unsolved. To the extent that the governor touched on the real issues yesterday, he either sent mixed signals or dealt with the problems only in vague or glancing ways. On the crucial matter of the state’s climate for business, Mr. Pataki seemed in denial of the problems. He mentioned that “Site Selection Magazine ranks New York second in the nation in business climate.” That’s not even accurate. Here’s what the magazine actually said about its most recent rankings: “In the 2003 Site Selection Business Climate Ranking, corporate real estate executives ranked New York as only the 19th best state for overall business climate. However, New York was second only to Michigan in actual number of corporate real estate projects over the last three years. Furthermore, in the 2003 Site Selection Competitiveness Awards, a ranking based on economic performance in 10 objective categories, New York placed eighth.”

New York may be able to woo big companies by offering special tax breaks in “Empire Zones” to companies with the resources to navigate the bureaucracy and fill out the forms. But for an ordinary small businessman in New York City, the state’s tax and regulatory burden can be crushing, as has been shown by many other studies by reputable groups like the Pacific Research Institute and the Public Policy Institute of New York State.

One reason is taxes. Here Mr. Pataki offers such mixed signals that it is maddening. “We know tax cuts work,” he says, in a speech that elsewhere vows “bold, sweeping change.” He named Lawrence Kudlow, a supply-sider, to lead an effort to revamp the New York State tax code. So it is all the more disappointing that all Mr. Pataki had to offer in the way of tax cuts in this particular speech was “expanding our Earned Income Tax Credit to include lower income, single fathers.” That’s not a growth-oriented marginal tax cut; it’s a variation on welfare. Mr. Pataki was also able to summon up from somewhere the political courage to say, “let’s accelerate the phase-out of the temporary personal income tax increase for all New Yorkers… and let’s do it this year.” This hardly amounts to Mr. Pataki calling for a tax cut, since it is just a reversal of a tax increase that happened on his watch. We’re all for it, but if Mr. Pataki really wants to be known as a tax cutter, he’s going to have to go way beyond that.

On Medicaid, where New York spends far more than either California or Texas, two states with larger populations, Mr. Pataki promised he would propose reforms “that will reduce costs.” But he gave no indication of what the changes would be.

Mr. Pataki’s process-related proposals for change in Albany were another disappointment. He mentioned initiative and referendum, two keys to improvement in state government. That was welcome, but he left them off his list of seven “major goals” for change in Albany. If they don’t even make the governor’s top seven list, it’s hard to see them as a priority for the governor who, when it comes to allegedly toxic cleaning chemicals, goes straight to the executive order. A reform that would guarantee genuine change in Albany, term limits, went unmentioned by Mr. Pataki. The governor did, however, back a reform that is unconstitutional – a ban on procurement lobbying – and another that is unnecessary – a ban on all gifts from lobbyists. State law already outlaws bribery.

Mr. Pataki even managed to blunder on foreign policy, an area in which his instincts are usually sound. He announced a plan to visit Beijing, but made no mention of any plan to visit Taiwan, Red China’s democratic neighbor. If Mr. Pataki fails on his trip to China to offer his communist hosts a rebuke for their human rights record, he’ll embarrass himself further.

The illogic of life on Pataki’s planet came through one final time in the governor’s announcement of plans to add a voluntary income-tax checkoff for New Yorkers to donate to build a memorial at the World Trade Center site. He said Senator Schumer and Rep. Vito Fossella would introduce legislation calling for a similar checkoff on federal tax forms. New York was allocated $20 billion in federal aid after September 11. It has chosen to squander that on expensive transportation schemes like a plan to expand the South Ferry subway station, which isn’t even at ground zero. You’d think that a high priority use of the $20 billion would be paying for a memorial. But on Mr. Pataki’s planet, priorities are for the birds.