It’s hard to overstate how much is riding on the Court of Appeals’ judgment in the case of Local Government Assistance Corp. v. Sales Tax Asset Receivable Corp. This is the lawsuit by which Governor Pataki seeks to block Mayor Bloomberg from refinancing the remainder of New York City’s debt from the fiscal crisis of the 1970s. If the high court rules the wrong way, Mr. Bloomberg will be allowed to extract $5.1 billion from taxpayers of New York State over the next 30 years to replace a city obligation of only $2.5 billion over the next five.

Keep in mind that these bonds will buy New Yorkers exactly nothing — not a stadium for the West Side or a subway line for the east side, not a single teacher or firefighter, nor even a manhole cover. All the taxpayers get for their extra $2.6 billion is the pleasure of paying off the credit card bill that an earlier generation of politicians ran up more than 30 years ago. It is a reminder of just how slippery is the slope on which politicians are operating with the vast, unfunded spending schemes that have come into fashion.

To be fair, his honor is not the one who concocted this latest scheme. What he quite reasonably requested last year was extra aid from Albany during a financial crisis. It was Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno who chose to “save” the city money by dunning a future generation. When Mr. Pataki, in the course of his long showdown with the legislature over budgeting, exposed the folly of their plan and vetoed it, the two legislative leaders ordered their members to override him.

The disregard that Messrs. Silver and Bruno showed for the interests of their constituents outside New York City is shocking. But it will be impossible for Mr. Bloomberg to pretend that upstate’s misfortune is Gotham’s gain. The taxpayers of New York City actually stand to save surprisingly little, if anything, if this deal goes through. This is because the state will make its annual debt payments of $170 million out of the sales tax, about 40% of which comes from transactions in the five boroughs. Thus city residents can expect to pay 40% of the new debt as well, or a bit more than $2 billion.

In other words: The good people of upstate and Long Island will shell out $3.1 billion over the next 30 years to reduce New York City’s burden by less than $500 million. Unfortunately, what is wrong isn’t necessarily illegal. Albany officials have so thoroughly circumvented the constitutional limits on borrowing over the decades that the judges of the high court might be hard-pressed to prohibit this latest abuse without jeopardizing the standing of individuals who have lent their money to state and local governments in the past.

Given the stakes and the legislative history of this case, it looks, by our lights, that logic calls for the Court of Appeals to come down on the side of Mr. Pataki, and of the taxpayers. But citizens of this state should not have to rely on the courts to protect them from their own elected representatives. If the court sanctions this latest fiscal abomination, the responsibility — and the shame — will properly fall upon Messrs. Bruno and Silver for authoring it and on Mr. Bloomberg for defending it.