Well, not so fast. Her blockbuster budget overdue by almost a month, Gov. Kathy Hochul faced another looming unofficial deadline, and so she announced a budget deal with the legislature early this week that wasn’t quite what it seemed. Is anything in Albany?

Premature exultation, fumed Assemblymember Sarahana Shrestha, D-Esopus. Does the professional protester know something nobody else knows? I doubt it. There is no three-in-a-room budget deal, she said, though as a rank-and-file outsider, she could have no real idea what was in the $254 billion spending plan the governor claims the legislature has agreed to.

The most carefully guarded secret in Albany, Big Three budgets have been crafted by the Assembly speaker, Senate majority leader and the governor for generations. Legislative leaders and governors come and go, but the budget process remains the same — hidden, self-serving, undemocratic.

There is one other unofficial branch of government, however, that may have a better read in what’s really contained in the document that could be released on or about May 1. Called the fourth branch of government, Albany’s horde of lobbyists watch every dollar that might affect their clients. They’ll keep the hush.

So, what’s in that budget? Nobody knows.

One thing we do know is that the budget, one way or another, will influence the lives of some 19 million New Yorkers.

Kathy’s Clubhouse

Given the way our governor helicopters around the state handing out taxpayer checks for every worthwhile cause, I doubt if she’s spending much time in mind-numbing budget negotiations with legislative leaders. But the governor was in town last weekend for the annual Ulster County Democratic Party luncheon at Wiltwyck Golf Club outside of Kingston. A rah-rah speaker of the first order, what they call “retail politics (grassroots), Hochul had the sold-out crowd eating out of her hand. Or so I’m told.

Everybody was there, but not everybody made the group photo posted on Comptroller March Gallagher’s Facebook page. Absent from the photo was two-term Assemblymember Shrestha.

Interesting. Shrestha, against determined (primary) opposition, holds the seat but misses the photo-op. Tongues were wagging.

‘People Will Die’

I’ve had it up to here with this Samadhi soap opera, mostly because I’ve become convinced that nothing’s going to change other than the money the county poured into this failed addiction treatment program.

For clarity on this issue, I commend a well-thought-out, sensibly argued editorial in this week’s Kingston Wire. I won’t offer full disclosure because everyone knows I work for the same digital outlet.

However, the Wire raises a point, perhaps the most important point thus far, that almost everyone seems to have overlooked, myself included. People will die.

I did give some thought that an organization like Samadhi that couldn’t or wouldn’t get its fiscal house in order was probably doing a lousy job in treating the poor wretches which were its reason for being.

The Wire put it succinctly. “People will die,” it warned, because of the gross ineptitude the Samadhi board of directors, Legislator Kathleen Nolan, D-Shandaken, its president, its management and staff.

The aforementioned Gallagher, who blew the whistle on Samadhi, charged recently that the whole operation “reeks of cover-up.” Check that, March: it reeks of corruption.

Hopefully, the powers that be, after turning a blind eye to this “cover-up,” to put it mildly, learns a hard lesson from this sordid experience. Virtue is only a means to an end.

Woe to Wojcik

Then there was one. Rejected by state Supreme Court after she failed to secure the necessary valid signatures on her nominating petitions, county clerk hopeful Alexandria Wojcik now has no path to the second-floor corner office in the County Office Building occupied by Acting County Clerk Taylor Bruck.

Thoroughly beaten at every stage of what some critics called her “salary drive,” Wojcik’s populist pitch just didn’t connect to Democratic Party members. She collected valid signatures from just 991 of some 50,000 eligible Democrats.

The failed petition effort was the clincher, however. In filing 301 signatures that were ruled invalid by both election commissioners, a decision which the court upheld, the candidate displayed a woeful lack of commitment to paperwork. And paperwork is what the clerk’s job is really all about.

In hindsight, Wojcik will undoubtedly portray herself as a victim of the Democratic machine, a machine built and organized to crush Republicans without mercy. This time, it was her turn.

And Finally

I note with regret the passing of retired Freeman sportswriter Don Treat, 73, two weeks ago after a short illness. It was only a few months ago that I offered Don condolences on the passing of his wife. The couple had no children.

A graduate of Saugerties High School where he played on the golf team, Don worked at several other papers before signing on as a sports writer at the Freeman in mid-career.

“Donny was solid,” Freeman sports writer Rick Remsnyder said of his former colleague. “He could cover anything, a real newspaperman’s newspaper man.”

It was in his genes. Don was the younger son of former Freeman publisher Dick Treat.

A few parting words about small-town newspaper sportswriters: Year-round, almost on a daily basis, sportswriters meet and interact with more people than a political columnist might encounter in a month. In many ways, sportswriters, the men and women who write about our kids and adult sports, are the face of their newspapers.

Rest in peace, Donny.