How elected class could make things easier on itself

Governance never will be easy.

But the elected class could make it simpler - if only on itself.

In Albany, denizens of the Capitol these days oversee a budget of more than $135 billion. Negotiating it will always be tricky and messy.

A plan was due April 1, the start of the fiscal year. But the process turned into a months-long election-year drama, chock-full of votes and vetoes, fits and starts, bangs and whimpers.

After all that, the plan has huge holes. According to state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli - also seeking election in November - the budget bills boost state spending, rely on billions of dollars in risky revenues, and rest too much on temporary funds.

Which prompts the question: If the product was to come out that flawed, couldn't it have at least been punctual and flawed?

For that matter, Gov. David A. Paterson could have avoided his own lame-duck blues by staying away from his top aide's domestic-abuse troubles. That probe - out of Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's office but headed by ex-chief-state-judge Judith Kaye - remains open. We hear it's complicated. It need not have existed at all.

Consider, also, the latest from Nassau, where County Executive Edward Mangano announced this week he'd negotiated a compromise with top legislators over future hiring of outside counsel.

The county charter as amended 10 years ago says the legislature's Rules Committee approves legal contracts of more than $25,000. The Mangano administration wasn't submitting them.

One such contract, as Newsday reported, goes to the law firm of Joseph Mondello, the veteran county GOP chairman. But forget the who's who. With Republicans back in the legislative majority, Mangano was not about to face anything like partisan obstruction. Observers are left to wonder how seeking the approval from the start wouldn't have proved easier for the administration.

Last week, Paterson signed a law barring New York City from keeping its database containing the names of more than a million people who were stopped, questioned, frisked and then not charged. Even the Republican candidate for state attorney general, Staten Island District Attorney Dan Donovan, a strong ally of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, supported that action - with the caveat he still considers stop-and-frisk a legitimate law-enforcement tool.

Bloomberg resisted the legislation, insisting it will drive up crime. But if all the AG candidates in both major parties were in consensus on this database, you'd have thought a leader who belonged to both those parties before leaving them would have understood the libertarian concerns well before Albany acted.

In Suffolk, a flurry of complication has surrounded County Executive Steve Levy's past practice of filing a state financial disclosure as substitute for the county's more-extensive disclosure form. Nearly everyone else required to make these disclosures did so on the prescribed county form. Instead of yielding to the usual protocol, Levy has insisted his own way was proper.

Again, this is more complicated than necessary.

Candidates for public office frequently cite a need to reform systems, simplify organizational charts, and reduce mandates. Though not as politically sexy, there's also something to be said for officials abiding by existing deadlines, procedures and sensibilities.