Unpopular New York governor David Paterson has just ordered an 11 percent budget reduction across many state agencies, and the spending lobby in Albany is, of course, up in arms. For example:

The state’s biggest public sector union railed against Paterson’s latest move as “poor management and bad public policy.” The Civil Service Employees Association said Paterson is not doing enough to reduce the ranks of agency managers, noting that only about 50 management/confidential workers were released under a recent buyout program compared with thousands of lower-paid employees.
“The only thing he keeps going back to is state operations, and it’s partly because he has that in his control and he also can’t bring anyone to the table to deal with anything. It’s a lack of leadership,” CSEA’s Stephen Madarasz said of the governor’s inability to strike a deal so far with lawmakers to reduce the overall deficit.

Actually, it’s true that the Paterson administration hasn’t done nearly enough to cut administrative cost. And because it leaves out Medicaid and public schools, the plan won’t reduce New York’s yawning deficit much:

E.J. McMahon, director of the Empire Center for New York State Policy, a conservative think tank, criticized the governor for not yet getting at the heart of the state’s fiscal problems: a soaring deficit that has been public for months.
“I call it fiscal minimalism,” McMahon said of the 11 percent cuts that would, at most, deal with a quarter of the current projected deficit.

For New York readers of NRO, there’s no better resource for excellent information on state government than the Empire Center, a project of the Manhattan Institute. You can read more about its views on New York tax and spending issues here.