OK, I wasn't at the comptroller screening sessions in Albany. Maybe a bunch of Democratic pols know more about the qualifications for comptroller than former comptrollers themselves. Maybe the former comptrollers --- who were asked by Governor Spitzer to select the finalists for the job --- were wrong when they said none of the candidates from the Assembly were qualified.

But my gut tells me that the comptrollers were looking out for the interests of the state, and the Assembly Democrats, who ignored the former comptrollers' nominations and chose one of their own, were looking out for their friends.

Spitzer had pleaded with the Democrats --- who controlled the vote --- to recognize the context in which they were acting. The comptroller's seat is vacant because Alan Hevesi, thinking he was more important than New York taxpayers, had used our money to chauffer his wife.

To most of us, this was just one more example of Albany politicians running amuck. And the public has been pleading for change. But the pols in Albany either don't hear or don't care.

When the Brennan Center issued its report calling our state legislature "dysfunctional," many legislators sniffed. Not true, they said. The system works the way it oughta.

So they have mostly ignored the Brennan report. They've ignored the citizen campaigns and the newspaper editorials pleading for reform. Now, apparently, they think there was no message in the landslide vote for Spitzer, who built his campaign around a promise of reform.

And last week they went into a room, closed the door, and chose Assemblymember Thomas DiNapoli as the state's new comptroller.

And after the vote, according to the New York Times, behind that closed door, they cheered. Cheered what they had done.

At a press conference later that day, an angry Spitzer lashed out. Assembly Democrats, he said, have indulged in "an insiders' game of self-dealing that unfortunately confirms every New Yorker's worst fears and image of all that goes on in the legislature of this state."

"The question was not who was best qualified among the 19 million New Yorkers for this job," said Spitzer, "but rather, ‘Who among us will receive as a virtual gift this job that we control.'"

"The legislature," said Spitzer, "let politics and cronyism overwhelm sound judgment at the worst possible moment."

The legislators can do this kind of thing with no worries, of course. Nobody can throw them out of office. The Democratic and Republican leaders in Albany have agreed to carve up control of the legislature, drawing district lines so that the Republicans can control the Senate and the Democrats can control the Assembly, and the safety of every seat is almost guaranteed.

Reforming the way district lines are drawn is one of Spitzer's priorities, but after the vote on comptroller, he issued a warning. Redistricting legislation, he said, as well as campaign-finance reform, "are simply not within our grasp."

Spitzer, of course, is not above his own brand of power politics. And so while he was chastising members of his party in the Assembly, he was celebrating the election of a new state senator, Craig Johnson, a Democrat from Nassau County. Spitzer is directly responsible for Johnson's election. He was chosen in a special election to fill a seat vacated when Spitzer lured Republican Michael Balboni out of the Senate and into his administration.

That put the Democrats within reach of controlling the Senate. All they need is to get two more Republicans to join the Spitzer administration or switch sides in the Senate. And Spitzer's hard at work on both.