Politics on the Hudson

George Pataki may be gone, but that doesn’t mean that Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver has stopped taking shots at him.

“We had a governor who would drop by Albany on occasion, drop off a budget, and say take care of it,’’ Silver, D-Manhattan, said in a radio interview today, digging at the former governor for what Silver and others viewed as a hands-off negotiating style over the state budget.

Silver was making the point that Gov. Eliot Spitzer is far more involved in talks surrounding a new spending plan than Pataki ever was.

The open animosity between the two men during the 12 years Pataki was governor was viewed by many as a hindrance to a budget getting passed on time (it was late for Pataki’s first 10 years in office) and other legislation getting bogged down.

Silver was the only Democrat among the “three men in a room’’ that made most important decisions in those years. Republican Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno rounded out the troika.

Now the shoe is on the other foot, with Bruno the odd man out – the only Republican in the troika.

And he and Spitzer don’t appear to be getting along swimmingly. Bruno today called the governor “a bully,’’ who likes to lecture more than negotiate. That could be a sign that more gridlock is in store at the Capitol. Silver said if there’s no progress “in the next 24 to 36 hours,’’ lawmakers probably will miss the April 1 budget deadline.

“If we can break a log jam by that point, we can have a timely budget,’’ Silver said.

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