JOBS FOR ALBANY'S DO-NOTHINGS Here are two important dates to keep in mind. April 1. That's when New York State was supposed to have a new budget. And June 1. That's when the state is scheduled to make a payment to local schools that is about $1 billion more than the cash on hand. Forty-five days later and Gov. David Paterson and the leaders of the Legislature can't agree on how to close a $9.2 billion deficit in the $136 billion budget. What are they doing? Blaming each other and hoping the economy will bounce back or that somehow they can put off painful decisions until after the election. The way we hear it, they're not even negotiating in person. We rarely agree with anybody in Albany, but they're right about one thing: They're all at fault. They need to get to work, now. More specifically: THE GOVERNOR Paterson's original budget in January spared almost nobody. But he hasn't gotten anyone else to sign on. Paterson doesn't have much clout as he fights accusations that he tried to protect a top aide from charges of domestic violence. But he is still the governor, and he needs to act like it. He needs to call in all of the state's top players, including the unions, and demand that they keep talking until they have a workable deal. He can then hand over the negotiations to Lt. Gov. Richard Ravitch, who knows budgeting and may have the only real plan for righting the state's finances. THE ASSEMBLY Speaker Sheldon Silver and his fellow Democrats have adopted most of the Ravitch plan, including short-term borrowing and modernization of the state's budget process. But their budget proposal is still too generous, especially to the state's unions. Silver needs to get into that room and promote the interests of all New Yorkers. He is the right person to tell the unions that they have to do their share -- agreeing to make modest contributions to their health care (like most other workers) or delayed pay raises and almost certainly furloughs. To spread the pain fairly, Silver should be promoting luxury taxes, sales of wine in grocery stores and a fat tax on sodas. Ideally, New York's income taxes should be made fairer. But this is not a state government that has the time or will to do the hard overhaul. Even a small short-term income tax surcharge on the rich would help. THE SENATE Democratic leader John Sampson can't control his caucus. There are 32 Senate Democrats and 30 Republicans and (as we have already seen) any self-absorbed Democrat can defect and cause trouble. The Senate's budget proposal is, to put it generously, wacky. It calls for closing this year's deficit by taking out long-term loans that will increase the state's interest liabilities for decades to come. Senators in Long Island and the suburbs are demanding property tax relief that would only widen the huge budget gap. Sampson should concentrate on keeping his members quiet while the Assembly and the governor agree on a budget. Then Paterson, Silver and Sampson can try to shame Senate Democrats into approving the deal. SENATE REPUBLICANS They complain constantly that no one is consulting them. That's true. They need to come into the room with real ideas for raising revenue and cutting spending. So far, all they want to do is cut property taxes and raise money for schools. UNION LEADERS They may think they got a big win this week when a court rejected Paterson's proposal to furlough state workers one day every week to save about $30 million. But, if this drags on much longer, the governor will have no choice but to start laying off people. It is time for the unions to stop waving around lawsuits and start negotiating seriously. NEW YORK'S VOTERS Keep two more dates in mind. Primary day, Sept. 14. And Election Day, Nov. 2. STILL HOMELESS IN HAITI Of the more than 1.5 million Haitians left homeless by the Jan. 12 earthquake, about 7,500 have been moved from the most dangerous areas of crowded tent cities to new resettlement sites. The conditions in those tent cities are grim. Thunderstorms are fierce, and the plastic sheets and tarps distributed after the disaster are fraying, along with the people's patience. Meanwhile, the demand for secure housing keeps growing as people who fled the capital, Port-au-Prince, move back, because that's where most of the aid is. Why is it so bad? The reasons are partly understandable and partly maddening. When the United Nations, donor countries and aid organizations rushed to Haiti's aid, the first priority was water, food and medical care. With the rains coming, they raced to distribute emergency shelter materials to more than a million people, and, almost miraculously, they succeeded. They also sent engineers out to mark structurally sound homes with green paint. Many people still aren't going home. They are afraid of more quakes, or can't afford rent, or have no jobs to return to. The biggest problem -- the worst frustration to relief organizations ready and eager to build homes -- is the lack of land to build on. Haiti's government has been far too sluggish in finding and acquiring sites to build new housing. Property ownership and land titles were a messy business in Haiti in the best of times, and now, with records destroyed and many landowners reluctant to cooperate, the problem is excruciating. Some communities take a not-in-my-backyard stance toward indigent newcomers because it seems obvious to them that new 'transitional' settlements will likely be permanent. Central to the ambitious plans for rebuilding Haiti is the goal of creating new population centers outside the cripplingly congested capital, with new jobs, schools and clinics to go along with new housing. Aid organizations can help in this by moving their rebuilding and redevelopment efforts out to the provinces to give displaced people the reasons and opportunity to relocate. They can't get started until President Rene Preval and his team make up their minds about where new communities will go. They need to acquire property, by eminent domain if necessary, to meet the urgent need to safely shelter the displaced and to ease the pressure on Port-au-Prince. WHOSE BEST INTEREST? Among the disastrous moves that turned Wall Street into the Wild West was a 1999 ruling by the Securities and Exchange Commission that let stockbrokers call themselves 'advisers' without making them abide by the law that requires investment advisers to put their clients' interests first. While investors often believed they were getting unbiased advice, brokers were free to pitch investments intended to boost their own profits or those of their firms. Brokers had to recommend 'suitable' investments, but that gave them leeway to sell overly expensive products. In 2007, a federal court ruling added to the confusion. It imposed a fiduciary duty on brokers who charge fees for advice, no matter what their title. But brokers who earn only commissions could still call themselves advisers without being required to act in a client's best interest or disclose their qualifications, disciplinary histories and any conflicts of interest. That's not acceptable. It is just the sort of problem financial reform is supposed to fix. An early version of the Senate bill imposed a fiduciary duty on all brokers who give advice. That was gutted early on. Now the bill lamely calls on the SEC to study the issue. Some senators are trying to get things back on track. Democrats Daniel Akaka of Hawaii and Robert Menendez of New Jersey have an amendment that would create a fiduciary duty for brokers who give advice to individuals, bringing the bill in line with legislation passed by the House. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., would impose a fiduciary duty on brokers who advise certain institutional clients, like pension funds and endowments. The Senate should pass both. A competing amendment, by Republican Susan Collins of Maine, would impose a fiduciary duty on brokers who advise individuals but with a loophole especially for brokers at insurance companies that sell proprietary products. Financial reform is complex, but a fiduciary duty for brokers who give advice should be a no-brainer. A HOLE IN THE SPRING SKY Twenty-five years ago this month, a small team of scientists discovered that the ozone layer above their Antarctic station was thinning more and more every spring. The layer protects life on earth from the sun's ultraviolet light. The response to that discovery is a rare, happy environmental morality tale. In 1996, an international accord banned the use of chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs -- which were used as refrigerants in air-conditioners and propellants in aerosol spray cans -- that were causing the ozone hole. The treaty has phased in slowly. And the hole, gaping widely every spring, is much larger today. But it would be far worse without the protocol, and there is good reason to expect that it will return to pre-1970 levels by 2080. There is another lesson here, one that has nothing to do with citizen action or international accords or aerosol sprays. The discovery of the ozone hole would have been impossible without paying close, consistent attention to the world around us and having the personnel needed to decipher the results. As Jonathan Shanklin, one of the scientists who discovered the hole notes, Halley Research Station had continuous ozone data reaching back nearly 40 years. Discovering the ozone hole was to a large extent a matter of processing and correlating that data and being open to the surprising results. It's a reminder that good science is patient, observant, careful and continuous. That kind of science -- which is especially valuable for understanding climate change -- requires long-term commitments in financing and education. It requires the ability to gather data accurately over the years and to educate the scientists who can turn that data into a new awareness of how this world works. That knowledge helped us to make the decision that aerosol sprays and other CFCs are not worth a yawning void in the springtime Antarctic skies. CORRECTION An editorial on May 14 erred in stating that 14 million people have the AIDS virus. That is the number of infected people who need immediate drug treatment. 