Governor Pataki said yesterday that he opposes a plan for refinancing New York City’s “MAC debt,” which is left over from the fiscal crisis of the 1970s, and it’s not hard to see why. The maneuver, cooked up by spendthrifts in the Legislature, would shift the debt burden from the city to the state, spread the payments out over 30 years instead of five, and more than double the cost to taxpayers, to $5.1 billion from $2.5 billion. The only beneficiaries, it seems to us, are the elected officials at Albany and City Hall, who can take credit for solving a budget crisis while letting future generations pay the bills.

To his credit, Mr. Pataki has wanted no part. He vetoed the legislation authorizing the transaction and, when overridden by the Legislature, declared repeatedly that it was both constitutionally and morally bankrupt. “It is clearly wrong to have taxpayers of New York State 30 years from now paying off operating loss es that occurred 25 years ago,” Mr. Pataki said yesterday. But Mr. Pataki’s fine words are starting to ring hollow. Certainly his arguments have done nothing to dissuade Mayor Bloomberg, his fellow Republican, from moving ahead rather gleefully with plans to float the ill-conceived bonds. We acknowledge that Mr. Pataki, facing almost unanimous opposition at the Capitol and City Hall, holds few cards. Indeed, he tried last month to get lawmakers to pass a less costly refinancing deal, and the Democrat-led Assembly refused to go along. But the governor has sworn to uphold the constitution he believes is about to be violated. Is there nothing he can do?

Why not, for example, use his majority control of the Financial Control Board, which monitors the city’s finances, to put the squeeze on Mr. Bloomberg? Instead, he allowed the board to accept the mayor’s budget as balanced — even though it counts on $531 million in savings from the refinancing he supposedly considers illegal. Why not proclaim loudly that he will never release the $170 million a year in state funds earmarked to finance the deal, which just might scare off would-be investors? Why not file a lawsuit, which, even if it ultimately failed, would force the city to delay the bond sale and, one hopes, find a better way to solve its financial problems?

There is still time to pursue these strategies, but it grows short. Aides to the mayor told our Matthew Sweeney yesterday that they will do the misbegotten deal in as little as two weeks. And once investors lay down their money it would be folly for any politician or court to block their repayment. It does not sound to us, frankly, as if Mr. Pataki has the stomach to do battle. Asked yesterday how he proposed to avert this particular fiscal train wreck, Mr. Pataki said he would “work with the mayor and the Legislature.” The time has come to work against them.