Gov. David Paterson this morning bristled at the suggestion that his lame duck status is contributing to the budget stalemate in Albany, insisting yet again the real problem is not his own lack of clout, but rather an inherent dearth of power in the governor’s office.

“It’s easy to make that association, but the budgets in New York State have been late 25 of the last 30 years, and only one of those years, 2006 when Governor (George) Pataki was in his last year, only one of those years was the governor a so-called lame duck,” Paterson told WOR’s John Gambling (stop #2 on the governor’s Wednesday radio tour).

“I’m not getting in my opinion any better cooperation right now than I was getting when I was still a candidate for governor back in December and the Legislature left the state $600 million short and we ran out of money,” Paterson continued.

“…I don’t think it’s about the personality or who the governor is. And I think we distract ourselves by getting into, you know, how the Legislature feels about the governor and that kind of thing.”

“Believe me, they will say the same thing about the next governor next year. Next year you will be interviewing someone else – assuming they come on the program – and they will be having the same problems with the Legislature.”

Is it me, or is that “assuming they come on the program” a little jab at AG Andrew Cuomo, Paterson’s erstwhile primary opponent, who has been keeping a very low profile, especially when it comes to the budget battle and his ideas to fix the state.

Paterson went on to note that Cuomo’s father, former Gov. Mario Cuomo, had late budgets during 11 of 12 of his years in office, while the budget was late 10 of the 12 years during Pataki’s tenure.

“When are we going to get that it’s not who the governor is, it’s an imbalance of power structurally in our government that does not allow the chief executive the authority he or she would need to keep this state from becoming insolvent?” Paterson griped.

The governor first raised this argument during an interview earlier this week with the Wall Street Journal and was promptly panned by Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy, one of the three GOP gubernatorial hopefuls.

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