Talks on reforming New York’s campaign-finance system recently fell apart in Albany. No surprise there. Of all the possible government reforms, campaign finance could be the most unpopular among legislators, perhaps running even with nonpartisan redistricting.

The reason is obvious. These two powers – to raise buckets of campaign cash and to draw the borders of legislative districts (including those you want and excluding those you don’t) – form the heart of incumbent power in the Legislature. Getting them voted into law by those very same incumbents will be a neat trick.

Yet Gov. Eliot Spitzer promised during last year’s campaign to work to fundamentally change how state government works, and in the past week he has made a slew of proposals following through on that pledge. Not only did he propose to lower various types of campaign contribution limits, he also proposed legislation to overhaul the court system and to revamp election law, including, yes, establishing a redistricting process independent of (though influenced by) the Legislature. (He also introduced a bill to allow marriage between gay people – it was a busy week.)

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New York is an old state. That gives us a proud history to reflect upon, from the rising of the New York City as the world’s financial capital to the birth of social reforms and protections for workers to the construction of public engineering marvels like the Erie Canal.

It also gives us a woefully outdated structure of government that has proven incredibly resilient despite many criticisms and calls for change.

The latest evidence comes from a Center for Governmental Research project — prepared for the Long Island Index — comparing the structure and cost of government on Long Island to that of another densely populated suburban area: Northern Virginia.

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A couple months ago, I suggested that New York might be better off with a late budget than an on-time one. I wondered if our new governor, Eliot Spitzer, might conclude that winning concessions on the budget might be worth the political cost of breaking the two-year record of “timely” budgets.

But for the past week, Spitzer and legislators have scrambled to negotiate, print bills and pass the budget on time. The result is a relatively on-time budget (one day late) that raises spending 7 percent.

Spitzer and legislators added $1 billion to Spitzer’s proposed budget despite having agreed earlier that there was only $575 million in revenue to add to the budget. The budget total is still a moving target, even though the bills have been passed, but in the neighborhood of $121 billion.

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