When Gov. Kathy Hochul and state lawmakers approved New York’s latest budget, they pushed spending to its highest level in history.

New data about the state’s financial picture show they didn’t think enough about the future.

A new budget projection shows the state expects expenses to outpace revenues by $9 billion beginning next April.

That gap will swell to $13 billion the year after.

To put those numbers in context, New York’s budget this year (excluding federal aid and borrowing) is $125 billion — about $23 billion more than it was before the pandemic (notwithstanding some Albany accounting gimmicks).

Hochul and state lawmakers appear to have been emboldened by last year’s unexpectedly high tax receipts, which gave rise to assumptions that future receipts would remain strong.

Those forecasts, however, have been pared significantly in recent weeks, after state tax receipts for April came in far below expectations.

Albany doesn’t have many good options on the revenue front.

Lawmakers hiked both personal income and corporate taxes in 2021, and undoubtedly risk greater outmigration of businesses and high earners if rates rise further.

Instead, lawmakers need to re-evaluate the spending choices — or lack of choices — that led them to abandon whatever restraint they had shown in the last decade.

And they should start with two sacred cows:

Legislators’ top focus should be on New York’s costliest-in-the-nation public schools, which spent over $26,000 per pupil during the 2020-21 school year, or 85% more than the national average.

Albany’s aid for school districts exploded from $19 billion in 2011-12 to $34 billion set to go out next year.

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