It is easy to muckrake the miscreants in power, but it is also essential to be positive and acknowledge decisions that do get made on the merits, and some office holders who are motivated by public interest.

So, today I want to praise some of the good decisions government makes – and thank some of the honest, capable people in local government.

Mayor Bloomberg’s new plan to prevent homelessness and build 12,000 units of “supportive housing” for the mentally ill is an excellent new policy.

It is not as ambitious as Mayor Koch’s historic housing plan of his third term, but it is sound and realistic. Spiraling rents, inflation, and the failure to raise the minimum wage made this initiative imperative.

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly and his 37,000 officers continue to drive down crime below where most experts ever dreamed it could be cut.

For the first six months of this year, the murder rate was down 11%. That’s 273 homicides this year, compared with 307 at this time last year. And the homicide rate in 2003 was the lowest it has been since 1963. The weekend bloodbath of 11 homicides seems to be a summer anomaly, fed by too many illegal guns on the streets.

Mr. Kelly is accomplishing this with 3,000 fewer officers than three years ago, and with the deployment of about 1,000 cops – and considerable planning energy – devoted to counterterrorism.

The June 9 Quinnipiac Poll showed Mr. Kelly was the most popular public official in the city – across all racial boundaries. His overall approval-to-disapproval rating was 67% to 16%. Blacks approved of his performance 64% to 27%, Latinos 61% to 18%, and whites 74% to 10%.The ratio is 66% to 19% in union households.

The PBA was out of step with the rest of the city, and with the vast majority of union families, when it called for Mr. Kelly’s resignation and gave him a vote of no confidence. Mr. Kelly’s reputation will be severely tested during the Republican National Convention. It is up to him to protect the constitutional rights of freedom of speech and assembly – while being vigilant against terrorism, and maintaining the distinction between protesters and terrorists.

Council Member Bill Perkins of Harlem sponsored a bill three years ago to protect children from lead poisoning and negligent landlords. He converted Council Speaker Gifford Miller to his cause, got the council to pass the legislation 44-to-5, and then helped override Mr. Bloomberg’s veto. It was quite an achievement by a legislator who has no fear and limitless empathy for life’s casualties.

Eliot Spitzer continues to prove himself to be the best state attorney general in America, exposing hedge funds, mutual funds, corporate chicanery, and bogus research at investment houses.

He has also won settlements against supermarket chains on behalf of immigrant workers who were paid well below the legal minimum wage. He is also justifiably suing Richard Grasso, the former CEO of the New York Stock Exchange. Mr. Spitzer’s legal papers argue that Mr. Grasso improperly pocketed more than $100 million in compensation.

Mr. Grasso has a lot of powerful friends, and Mr. Spitzer deserves credit for taking him on. This is not a private commercial dispute. Mr. Grasso presided over a closed system corrupted by a few insiders.

Mr. Spitzer has protected ordinary consumers and investors, while making enemies out of predatory over dogs and bottom feeders.

Judge Leland DeGrasse. His original decision in the school equity lawsuit was moral, reasoned, and prophetic. The Pataki-dominated Court of Appeals ratified his judgment that New York City must receive a more equitable share of state education funding, based on the state Constitution’s guarantee of a “sound basic education.”

The state government has been stalling for years on implementing Judge DeGrasse’s decision, but time is running out.

After July 30, Judge DeGrasse will appoint a special master to finally figure out how to end the cheating of the city’s school kids by upstate and suburban politicians.

Council Member Christine Quinn and the other West Side elected representatives have been fighting the proposed Jets stadium that would cost the taxpayers $600 million. Ms. Quinn and her team seem to be winning their fight, partly because they have been flexible enough to also support the meritorious expansion of the Javits Convention Center, and to separate Javits from the stadium boondoggle.

Richard Ravitch is probably the most profound critic of the Jets stadium. Last month he appeared on a panel with a deputy mayor, Daniel Doctoroff, and picked apart Mr. Doctoroff’s flimsy financial explanations and rationales.

Mr. Ravitch also played an important behind-the-scenes role in the Regional Plan Association’s opposition to the stadium’s construction. Mr. Doctoroff tried to strong-arm this respected civic group into silence, but Mr. Ravitch’s sophisticated argumentation stiffened some spines.

Robert Morgenthau applied term limits to Guy Velella, by convicting this corrupt octopus of bribery this year. The Manhattan district attorney gained jurisdiction, and was able to liberate Bronx politics with his painstaking, airtight prosecution of the former high-flying state senator.

My generous mood evaporates when I contemplate Albany.

Sure, there are a few individual legislators worth celebrating like Assemblyman Richard Brodsky and state Senator Liz Kruger, but I can’t think of a single state commissioner, or executive of a public authority, or leader of the Legislature, who I can honestly include in this positive homage.

Albany is a twisted wasteland beyond compliment.