New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo just proposed a 2011-12 state budget that seeks to close a deficit of nearly $10 billion.

As a result, state agencies and employees, public schools, health-care providers and anyone else who relies in whole or part on the state for its revenue is doing a lot of quaking and, if they can afford it, a lot of lobbying.

There is discussion about closing under-utilized state prisons, paring back state aid to everything from colleges to libraries, and drastically cutting expenditures to programs like Medicaid.

But there is one other institution — entirely state-funded — that has been spared the budget ax, even though it no longer provides any quantifiable service. It has outlived any arguable usefulness. It has been nationally recognized for its dysfunction. It has devolved into a playground-level arena for power grabs and political one-upsmanship. It routinely drains taxpayer funds while embroiled in internal feuds that halt all legitimate business. And it is full of members who demonstrate poor judgement, self-interest and, sometimes, a disregard for the law.

It is the New York State Senate.

It is a costly embarrassment and it is time for it to go.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: Why not get rid of the entire state Legislature? Let’s not be unrealistic. Mismanaging the state is too big a job for the governor to do all by himself. The Assembly may be the personal fiefdom of Speaker Sheldon Silver, but it at least operates without raining ridicule down upon itself.

Unlike the Senate, which, in just the past two years, has offered these arguments for its own dissolution:

• In 2009, after losing the majority for the first time in 35 years, Republican senators attempted a coup with two renegade Democrats to take back control. (They argued, with straight faces, that this was because Democrats hadn’t been able to bring reform to the chamber.) The result was a month-long power struggle and utter gridlock.

• Those two Democrats distinguished themselves in other ways. Hiram Monserrate of Queens was convicted of misdemeanor assault for attacking his girlfriend and was expelled from the Senate. Pedro Espada Jr. represented the Bronx but actually lived in tony Westchester County (they’re lax about these things in the Senate), was indicted in December on six federal counts of embezzlement and theft, and was defeated in a reelection bid in which he was challenged by his own state Democratic Committee…

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