When the state's financial crisis hit last spring — and we were surprised to learn in Thursday's P-R that at least 10 states were hit harder, according to the Pew Center — we were all told that the governor, the legislators and the public were going to have to brace for some heavy punches. Since then, the governor is the only one who has stuck out his chin.

Gov. David Paterson has proposed numerous measures to help make the books balance again, but nobody else has climbed aboard. Doing the right thing would cost someone a job or eliminate a service somebody desperately needs. (Those were the punches alluded to above.) We said we understood the situation and were ready for pain. But, instead, we all want phantom cuts — the kind somebody else will feel, but not us.

This is the way these things typically work:

Say the state has a Bureau of Nut Counters, the responsibility of which is to go around counting the number of nuts on the forest floor. That way, we'll be able to predict the squirrel population and assess how it stacks up with last year.

Say the governor proposes eliminating that service and closing the bureau.

First, all the counters will complain to their senators and Assembly members, who will immediately fire off a blistering memo berating the governor for daring to risk the consequences of losing the crucial work of those fine bureaucrats. "Over my dead body," the legislators will cry in one voice, and the governor will be sorely tempted.

The county and town where the counters live and work will be outraged and swear the governor will never get another vote in their community. The state legislators will do their jobs, circulating from office to office to assure their colleagues that, if they'll vote to save the counters, the legislators will return the favor when the governor comes up with another cockamamie idea to cut costs.

Eventually, the governor, realizing he has no votes to get rid of the bureau, will admit he's beaten and look for another area, which is certain to meet with equal hostility.

At one point, Paterson, desperate for any kind of progress told the legislators: All right, if you won't go along with any of my ideas, you come up with your own and we'll discuss them.

That was greeted with indignant silence. There were no ideas, and he was called ineffectual and cowardly for even asking.

Somebody besides the governor has to summon the courage to make hard decisions. If there is fat, get rid of it, even if it means lost jobs. If there is a service that isn't absolutely critical, be heroic and terminate it.

We're billions of dollars in the hole. Is Gov. Paterson the only one of us who understands that?