And what we ended up with for a state budget was the usual pile of semisolid brown matter that has passed out of the Albany body politic.

Which we are now required to eat.

With a smile on our faces.

All served up by the usual self-satisfied gang of fiscally oblivious, pork-chasing suits.

Whom we elected.

Yikes.

For all of the turmoil in Albany over the last 15 months, there has been precious little change in what really matters. Albany is still a cesspool of autocracy, fiscal profligacy, and procedural dysfunction - only more so.

The budget, which both giveth and taketh away, is the single most important work product in state government. As the primary document sustaining the state's system of taxation by jurisdictions both great and small, it is, in short, the foundation of New York's deserved reputation as a grievously expensive place to live or do business.

WHAT we got this past week was the near culmination of a "budget process" that was as furtive as any in recent memory, played out largely behind closed doors. You can thank just about everyone up there for that - the departed Gov. Eliot Spitzer for shaming himself and leaving the budget in the lurch; the elevated Gov. David Paterson for apparently not giving a whit about public accountability beyond his own extramarital affairs; and, of course, your state assemblymen and senators who are such a vitally compliant part of the system that sustains governance by "three men in a room."

Said Blair Horner of the New York Public Interest Research Group, "The public should be outraged. How does the public have an informed perspective if everything is done in the dark?"

Barbara Bartoletti, of the League of Women Voters, called it the worst budget process in nearly two decades. "No one is even talking about conference committees anymore," Bartoletti said. "It's just completely broken down and gone behind closed doors."

The suits you elected to represent you in Albany have been busy passing disconnected sections of the state budget - particularly spending authorization - without having any notion of what the final whole will look like. This means that, with the nation sliding into quite a frightening recession that is spreading like flu around the globe, your elected representatives are spending your money without really knowing how much the final bill will be or how it will be funded. This is like signing a contract to put an addition onto your home and buy designer jeans for your kids before finding out how much your new jobs are going to pay you and your spouse.

What we also got was more of the same addiction to spending and aversion to anything approximating restraint in increasingly difficult financial times.

And what we got was more of the sleight of hand that pushes an ever-bigger responsibility for the state tab onto the counties.

THE PROCESS started with an executive budget that was ill-suited for the financial challenges of 2008-09, calling for a 5 percent increase in spending and 1,800 more state workers.

A budget deficit had grown to $5 billion.

But the parochial interests still had their way with the spending plan.

With the state system of 69 prisons carrying some 3,000 more beds than it needs, a plan to close four prisons was rejected by lawmakers.

A plan to redeploy state troopers from postings as "school resource officers" to high-crime areas was also rejected.

A "great" compromise was struck on the closing of juvenile centers, according to the Albany Times Union. A plan to close six underused facilities was scrapped in favor of keeping two open. The newspaper put the cost of keeping the facilities open at $5 million in yearly salaries and $12 million in renovation costs.

Spitzer had proposed a 2 percent cut in aid to cities. Not only did the cut not survive, but the three men in a room reportedly have agreed to add $29.6 million to the current level of funding.

And it goes on and on.

So far, we have little about what has happened to Paterson's modest proposal several weeks ago that some $800 million in spending be cut from the budget.

Under the circumstances, we suspect it has either disappeared as quickly as a New York governor's marriage vows or will be obfuscated with some nonsense about newly found revenues, a brown-matter explanation we will be expected to swallow with a smile, courtesy of your elected suits in Albany.