Governor Pataki deserves a cheer from New York taxpayers for a series of vetoes of overly generous pension sweeteners and other measures that would have tilted the field in favor of the state’s already powerful public employee unions. One of the bills would have granted automatic raises to state and local government employees if the state Public Employment Relations Board found their employers were negotiating in bad faith. Others would have enriched retirement benefits for state workers at a cost of more than $100 million. The governor’s vetoes — 70 of them yesterday alone — are a reminder that while it is fashionable in some conservative quarters to deride Mr. Pataki, he is in many cases the only one protecting New York taxpayers from rapacious special interests and a legislature dedicated to slavishly serving them.

We don’t agree with each and every one of the governor’s vetos. Mayor Bloomberg is correct, for example, in wanting to allot to the New York City police commissioner – particularly this police commissioner — a slot on the board of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Maybe Mr. Pataki should have approved that provision with the caveat that the city police commissioner should hold a board seat so long as the commissionership is occupied by Raymond Kelly. But overall, Mr. Pataki’s vetoes are a signal that for all he has failed to achieve in his three terms in office, New Yorkers may come to miss him, particularly if he is replaced by someone more willing to go along with the crowd in Albany.