It is good to see the deadlock over New York’s 2017-18 budget appears to be over.

The state Senate began debate over the $152 billion spending plan late Tuesday night after lawmakers and Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo resolved a stalemate that forced them to blow past a Saturday budget deadline. The Senate planned to return to wrap up their voting Wednesday, when the Assembly also planned to take up the budget. It is good for area schools, the city of Dunkirk and the city of Jamestown to have the budget approved. The cities are waiting on final approval of aid promised earlier this year while schools can’t finalize their budgets until the state aid to schools included in the state budget is approved.

Of course, the deadlock didn’t need to happen in the first place.

The issues that mattered the most to a majority of local residents were likely approved weeks ago. Once again, the governor’s insistence on making controversial policy changes part of budget discussions. The most public of the reasons to hold up the budget was Cuomo’s proposed change to raise the age of criminal responsibility from 16 years of age to 18 years of age. So much time is spent debating such issues that lawmakers now have to rush through approving budget bills even though full details of the budget aren’t available while lawmakers are voting on the bills. “This is not a rational way to do these things,” Sen. Daniel Squadron, D-Brooklyn, told the Associated Press. “It’s a wacky process.”

Not only is it a wacky process, it’s a process that practically ensures bad government — or, as we in New York like to call it, business as usual.