Encouraging action in Albany

Say what you will about Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, but you can't very well accuse him of idleness.

New York's hyperkinetic chief executive spent Tuesday, his 54th birthday, celebrating a deal with legislative leaders to spend $1 billion on job-creating infrastructure improvements even while cutting taxes for the middle class. The legislature, due to reconvene Wednesday, should vote to approve the package.

Just as important, the New York Works Agenda ensures that money will be there to give school districts the 4 percent increase in aid that they so badly need next year. The deal would fund a comparable increase in state aid on health care, the state's two biggest costs.

But there's more. The plan would shift the state's income tax burden toward those most able to pay. It would exempt hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers and schools from the onerous Metropolitan Transportation Authority payroll tax, making up the lost revenue elsewhere. It would fund training, tax credits and other efforts to get unemployed minority youth into jobs. It would cut the tax on manufacturers by $25 million, and it would provide help for victims of tropical storms Irene and Lee.

On infrastructure, financing for the $1-billion fund is still a bit murky, and the sum is small in a state with needs so large. But Albany is heading in the right direction, especially because it would entail letting the state contract with a single firm to do both design and construction on a project, which state law now prohibits. Experts have long urged this change to save time and money on roads, dams and other projects.

Albany continues to astonish under Cuomo by moving fast to get things done -- and by the glaring contrast with Washington, where gridlock prevails. Overall the agreement concluded Tuesday would bring in nearly $2 billion a year in additional funding, in part by retaining most of the "millionaire's tax" surcharge that previously applied to earnings exceeding $200,000 a year.

Under Cuomo's plan this surcharge would now apply only to individuals with incomes of more than $1 million per year and couples earning $2 million. These people can afford to relocate, which is why this page opposed an extension of a broad surcharge. But by jacking up the threshold so high, the tax will apply only to a tiny elite, half of whom already officially live out of state but are subject to New York State taxes. And with a $3.5-billion budget hole looming in the next fiscal year, something had to be done. The state has already cut spending and won union concessions. Cuomo says he will cut more. It's was imperative, meanwhile, that Albany provide the promised aid to local school districts, which are just learning to live with a tough new 2 percent property-tax cap.

This bipartisan deal was reached by the state's big three power brokers -- Cuomo, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan) and Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos (R-Rockville Centre), who deserves special credit on the MTA tax. It was all done behind closed doors, which is deplorable, but hardly novel. The consolation is that, for a change, good things are coming from the same old bad process -- and New York's energetic governor isn't resting on his considerable laurels.