After missing their budget deadline for an appalling 20 years in a row, the New York State Legislature proposes to heal itself. Its prescription takes the form of legislation to re-jigger the budget process, along with a constitutional amendment that, if approved again next year, would be put to a referendum next November.

Among other things, the proposal would postpone the start of the state’s fiscal year by one month, to May 1, and automatically impose a contingency spending plan if lawmakers fail to agree on a formal budget by that date. It would also create an independent budget office to act as a referee during the endless debates over revenue and spending forecasts.

When Assembly Democrats and Senate Republicans approved the package this spring, they proclaimed that they were ending Albany gridlock and guaranteeing on-time budgets once and for all.

In keeping with their dilatory habits, however, they failed to approve this year’s budget until August 11 – the latest ever – and didn’t submit their budget reform bill for Governor Pataki’s approval until November 3, the day after Election Day. This last maneuver betrays a certain lack of courage on the legislators’ part. The person directly responsible for this timing, Senator Bruno, the majority leader, evidently anticipated that Mr. Pataki would veto the bill and thus take away his members’ ability to style themselves as reformers during the campaign season.

Albany clearly needs a shake-up, and some of the Legislature’s ideas merit support. But the package as a whole does not rise above the ineptitude and irresponsibility that we have come to expect from the state’s elected representatives. Mr. Pataki has no cause to hesitate to fulfill Mr. Bruno’s expectations and wield his veto.

Although Mr. Pataki is no longer the sharp-eyed fiscal conservative he once was, he remains the taxpayers’ best friend among the power players in state government. Governors in general, of both parties, are usually the ones pushing for financial probity, while legislators as a group invariably tug in the opposite direction.

In recognition of this, the state constitution gives the governor primary responsibility for financial affairs. He is the one who drafts the budget, presenting lawmakers with a series of line items for each spending program. Legislators may reduce or eliminate a line item, but not change the governor’s wording regarding how the money is to be spent. They may also increase spending on various line items, or create entirely new spending programs, but all such additions are subject to the governor’s line-item veto. The perennial stalemates at Albany derive primarily from the lawmakers’ reluctance to accept these constitutional constraints, which Mr. Pataki has been particularly aggressive in enforcing.

Having challenged this system in court – so far unsuccessfully, though the battle’s young – lawmakers are now trying to shift the balance of power legislatively.

Their primary means of accomplishing this is the contingency budget, which takes effect automatically on May 1. Ostensibly, this is meant as a temporary fallback, to keep the state running while negotiations continue. It would hold spending on most programs at the previous year’s level and institute across-the-board cuts in the event of a deficit – a degree of restraint which lawmakers would be unlikely to exercise on their own.

Hidden within the package, however, is language that declares enactment of the contingency plan to be the Legislature’s “final action” on the governor’s budget. That frees lawmakers to ignore the usual constitutional limits and rewrite the budget from scratch. This removes one of the governor’s most important levers in negotiations with the Legislature, and takes the brakes off what would surely be lead footed spending and taxation. Far from encouraging prompt action by the Legislature, it gives lawmakers a powerful incentive to drag their feet until early May.

Another regrettable provision of this “reform” proposal calls for the state to appropriate aid for public schools two years at a time. This is meant to avoid the uncertainty that school officials experience during budget delays, but it also virtually guarantees an even sharper upward trajectory for the state’s already lavish spending.

True reform, by our lights, would serve to keep spending and taxes in check, leading to a smaller state government that puts less of a burden on New Yorkers and their economy

As the president of the Business Council of New York State, Daniel Walsh, writes in a recent letter to the governor, “We believe the Legislature’s ‘reform’ proposals fail to solve the fundamental problem with the New York State budget: irresponsible spending. They could, in fact, make that problem worse.”

It must have been challenging to devise a budget process more deleterious to the state than Albany’s present system, but the Legislature has pulled it off. Mr. Pataki would do well to veto the legislation before him. And if lawmakers insist on putting their constitutional amendment on the ballot, he can campaign vigorously to defeat it at the polls.