Though there are rivals for the honor, the functionally Democratic Ohio Supreme Court, speaking through its chief, offered last week's greatest irony.

Ohio, says Republican Gov. Bob Taft, faces its tightest budget in years. Money isn't rolling into the Department of Taxation the way it used to. And costs of Ohio's biggest budget item, Medicaid, are climbing faster than an SUV pawing its way up a dry hill.

So Taft has told state agencies to cut spending for the year that ends June 30. And the 2001-03 budget may actually cut net year-to-year spending for some agencies, deluding conservatives that they've reached the New Jerusalem and convincing bureaucrats that they're in Hell.

For a mix of constitutional ("separation of powers") and political ("we're all Republicans here") reasons, Taft generally can't mess with spending on General Assembly operations, by the courts, or fellow state executives (such as the state treasurer).

Besides, those agencies don't spend much compared to the gazillions of dollars confided to, say, the Department of Job & Family Services (which covers unemployment and welfare). So, due to courtesy, practicality and the Constitution, legislators, statewide executives and the Supreme Court must prune themselves.

That's the scene-setter for the Hallmark card that Republican Chief Justice Thomas J. Moyer sent Taft last week. Lent is over for the rest of us. But the Supreme Court, Moyer said, will skim $1 million from its current budget to help balance Ohio's. The gesture was in character for Moyer: thoughtful (when he isn't preaching "merit-selection"), dignified and constructive.

But the gesture hid some unhappy facts. First, the Supreme Court can well afford to cut spending now. It hopes (or hoped) to gorge on Ohio's next budget.

The justices' budget request sought an 8.1 percent increase for next year in the fund they use to run the Supreme Court and subsidize local courts.

Because of cute bookkeeping, it's hard to tell which dollars go for what. But before the Supreme Court's operating fund and the local subsidy were braided together, Ohio's budget "blue book" shows tax-dollars the Supreme Court spent on itself leaped an eye-popping 14.5 percent from 1999 to 2000.

Moreover, though it's not an unworthy project, the Supreme Court is spending more than $100 million to remake the Ohio Departments of State Building, built in the 1930s on the Columbus riverfront, into a Supreme Courthouse. When done, the lavish courthouse will make the pre-Civil War Statehouse (restored in the '90s for about $120 million) seem, in comparison, like a ruin.

Actually, in the Supreme Court's case, the budgetary devil is not in the details. That's because, truth be told, the main reason Ohio is in a financial mess in the first place is because of the no-holds-barred school-spending demands of a Supreme Court majority (which excludes Moyer).

So, as the S.S. Ohio founders, skipper Taft, with mates Larry Householder of the House and Richard Finan of the Senate, is shoving cargo into the drink: Hence, huge nonschool budget cuts, hence (for the first time in eons) possible state-job layoffs, hence an Ohio bicentennial in 2003 that may pass unnoticed.

All because two Democratic justices (and two GOP colleagues), heeding anecdotes, not hard data, decreed that Ohio exists not, as its Constitution says, to "promote our common welfare," but to pay top dollar to budget-busting plaintiffs who offer the best Kodak moments. The apparent theory: School spending guarantees classroom results.

To help fight the Great Depression, many business people placed in their shop windows the National Recovery Administration's placard portraying a blue eagle, symbolizing the United States, and carrying the words, "We Do Our Part" (to promote recovery).

Likewise, Ohio's Supreme Court last week "did its part," albeit to combat a state budget problem the court itself largely created.

So now, the justices are entitled to post a contemporary "we do our part" sign - not the New Deal's blue eagle, but a graphic stand-in for today's Ohio: a plucked chicken, quivering under a gavel.

Suddes, The Plain Dealer's former legislative reporter, writes from Ohio University.

E-mail: suddes@frognet.net