Just as the Legislature was (mostly) wrapping up for the year came news that it’s left New York with a ticking time bomb: budget deficits set to explode starting next year, to a total of $36 billion over three next years.

Oh so unhelpfully, the state Division of the Budget dropped a Financial Plan update with the bad news after the latest damage got done.

Lawmakers and Gov. Kathy Hochul (and her unlamented predecessor) have been goosing state spending for years now, enabled by the avalanche of federal COVID aid and state tax revenues bloated by the (temporary) impact of more “free” federal cash on the private sector.

Overall state spending is up 30% in five years, but they just can’t stop.

This year, Albany hiked outlays about 3.9% from an already-record high, relying in part on rosy revenue projections from Hochul’s office back in January based on surprisingly strong 2022 tax collections.

Never mind that those projections got revised downward with each Financial Plan budget update.

Now Wall Street profits, capital-gains income, and other fat tax cows are falling back to earth, so the state’s tax take is imploding, too.

The result: State spending is set to outpace revenues by $9.1 billion next year, then by more than $13 billion in each of the two following years.

Yes, in the fat years, the state built up a $19 billion reserve fund, but that’s supposed to cushion the blow if things go badly wrong; it can’t fix this dire mismatch between Albany’s appetite and its means.

“Tapping this nest egg outside a major emergency or economic downturn, however, would leave the state poorly positioned when such an event inevitably occurs — and it wouldn’t be enough to cover even two years of spending,” warns the Empire Center’s Ken Girardin.

The logical action now would be a special session to cut back some of the new spending Albany just added, to soften the coming crisis.

Hochul and legislators just OK’d hikes of 9.7% in school aid and 7% for Medicaid — big wins for the state’s teacher’s unions and the powerful healthcare workers union SEIU 1199.

The two programs together make up about half the state budget, and New York spends vastly more (both in gross and per capita) than the national average, without getting anything like superior results.

“It’s likely the state could get both better health-care and education outcomes by holding these programs to realistic standards based on peer states,” notes the Empire Center’s Tim Hoefer.

But starting to address a problem before it becomes a crisis isn’t how New York’s Democratic rulers roll.

The Legislature will want to bury its head in the sand for now, and dream of tax hikes next year to “fix” everything.

As it is, the Assembly plans to return to OK yet more spending.

We’d love to see Hochul crack heads, stand up to the special interests, and demand emergency cuts — but you’re more likely to see her head buried in the sand next to the rest of New York’s “leadership.”