Sunset boulevard

If you’re lucky enough to live in an apartment with a dishwasher, you expect it to simply work until it eventually needs to be fixed or replaced. Your landlord doesn’t get to call you every six months to haggle over whether you really still need it, trying to extract concessions in exchange for you getting to keep cleaning your dishes, because that would be a ridiculous burden and waste of time and energy.

Yet we’ve accepted, for decades now, that a series of programs authorized by Albany lawmakers sunset periodically and have to be haggled over and reauthorized, almost always in the exact same or very similar form, sucking up political energy and keeping lobbyists well paid while gumming up the works for regular New Yorkers.

There’s no good reason that mayor after mayor should be forced to make dealmaking pilgrimages to the Legislature and New Yorkers should be held in suspense as they ponder whether to grace the city with continued mayoral control of schools, functioning speed cameras, tax incentives for affordable housing, or other essential programs. This year, the first looks set to be extended for just two years after multiple begrudging temporary authorizations; the second just got re-upped for a paltry three years; the third is likely to expire.

If lawmakers want to pass a law, they should pass it. Later, if they want to modify or nix a particular initiative, they can introduce a bill at any time. Let them explain to their colleagues and to the public why they believe certain public programs should be amended or phased out, and have a vote. Deadlines, whereby laws automatically go poof unless legislators manage to cobble together a new deal every couple of years, are for cowards.

Every second devoted to this procedural circus is one not spent finding actual creative solutions to significant problems like housing affordability and public safety. The only winners are Albany insiders who profit off of the dysfunction and redundancy. The losers are the other 20 million New Yorkers.