Different approaches

LIKE CALIFORNIA, voters in New York will decide this fall who should have more control over the state budget. But unlike our state, New Yorkers will decide whether to hand more power to their state legislature, and the Wall Street Journal doesn’t like it at all. If Proposal One passes, Empire State legislators could write their own budget if they don’t act on the governor’s draft by the start of the new fiscal year, which the Journal says would practically give an incentive to legislators to miss budget deadlines and increase spending.

Elsewhere, both the Christian Science Monitor and the New York Times today want the European Union to be more conciliatory in membership talks with Turkey, which began Tuesday. The Times rebukes Austria for its failed last-minute insistence that alternatives to full membership be on the table, which it says would have only humiliated Turkey. However, it gives just a passing reference to the decades-long road ahead for the talks, which the Monitor takes up in its editorial today.

The Monitor predicts up to 20 years of negotiations and acknowledges that Turkey has an arduous task ahead in meeting the EU’s standards for membership, including improving human rights and a freer economy. But the EU must also change, the Monitor says, including a greater acceptance of the “Muslim imprint” on Europe.

A separate Times editorial today hopes the disturbing trend of appointing buddies to key government positions doesn’t take hold with President Bush’s pick for Federal Reserve chairman. The Times wants someone with “independent traits ... who isn’t politically beholden to the While House.”

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Paul Thornton