NEW YORK STATE -- "New York needs to do a much better job of aligning our revenues and our spending," said New York State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli.

DiNapoli says while the $132 billion budget managed to close a historic $18 billion budget gap, it uses more than $11 billion in temporary stimulus funds and new taxes to do it.

"In effect, some of the tough choices on spending that New York is going to have to address at some point really have been postponed to a later time," DiNapoli said.

DiNapoli is now calling on the Governor and lawmakers to adopt reforms to the state budget process that include changing the fiscal year to July 1st, allowing more time for public input and decision making, mandated legislative conference committees for more transparency and accountability, increasing the size of the rainy day fund and reforming the debt management program.

One budget watchdog says the reforms may look good, but adds that history has shown that you can't legislate good behavior.

"It's really about leadership, stepping forward and saying we want to behave in a proper fashion when we adopt a budget and no amount of legislation will make that happen if lawmakers don't, in fact, want to do that," said Elizabeth Lyman, Citizens Budget Commission Department Research Director.

One lawmaker who did step forward was Governor Paterson, who criticized the comptroller's ideas as recycled and called on him to instead support a spending cap that would link budget growth to the rate of inflation. DiNapoli says it’s not enough.

"The spending cap is a serious proposal that needs to be the starting point for a discussion on how we control spending. I haven't endorsed the cap as he's proposed it. We're looking at it," said DiNapoli.

Lynam says she doesn't think the spending cap is the answer either.

"It's hard to design one that doesn't have a lot of exemptions to it that render it ineffective,” Lyman said. "These are all artificial constraints that get put in place almost because people can't take account of their behavior."

Lynam says things will only truly change when voters put more pressure on their lawmakers to cut down on spending.