Silver, whose district includes Ground Zero, spoke passionately about restoring downtown while avoiding attacks on Pataki's recent missteps there. The governor was wise to respond cordially, for bipartisan cooperation will be crucial to spurring much-needed progress.

The speaker's proposals were aimed at drawing tenants to buildings by reducing occupancy costs. He called for repealing the commercial rent tax; making businesses eligible for a relocation subsidy they can now get for moving from Manhattan to the outer boroughs, and offering rent breaks to companies that agree to become early tenants at the former World Trade Center site. He would also move some state offices there, including his own.

Some of these ideas have greater merit than others. Subsidizing rent breaks, for example, seems a dicey proposition, and the last thing anyone should want is to rely too heavily on filling the new towers with public rather than private workers.

At one point in his speech, it sounded as if Silver were delivering an unwelcome ultimatum to Pataki and Mayor Bloomberg: Cooperate with my plan or the Jets stadium is dead. Later, though, Silver made clear that he meant only to say that the state and city should develop incentives for downtown business before offering them to office development on the West Side. That's a more defensible position, even if Silver is wrong to try to advance downtown's fortunes by slowing West Side growth.

The speaker was also wrong when he dismissed U.S. Olympic Committee Chairman Peter Ueberroth's warning that New York would lose any shot at the 2012 Games if Silver and Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno fail to approve stadium construction well before July 6, when the International Olympic Committee is due to announce its decision.

Silver seems to think the IOC will be satisfied with a promise to build a stadium - somewhere, somehow - if the committee chooses New York. Silver and Bruno need to open their eyes to reality: Saying no to the West Side stadium is saying no to the Olympics.