If politicians don't want to be put in this position, they should not run for office, or at the very least, not stand as the head of their respective legislative chambers, as Joseph Bruno and Sheldon Silver have done.

It is time, for once, to take a position.

Editorial

Don't play games with the Games

New York has one shot, and only one shot, to win the 2012 Olympic Games, and that is to commit now to allowing the Jets to build a stadium on Manhattan's West Side. It is absurd for Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno to pretend otherwise.

Silver and Bruno have a stark choice to make: They either say yes to the stadium well before the International Olympic Committee designates a host city in just six weeks, or they absolutely kiss goodbye to the Games - along with a bonanza of housing development and recreational facilities.

The IOC will not select New York unless the committee knows the city will provide a spectacular centerpiece venue in an appropriate place. No less an authority than Peter Ueberroth, the U.S. Olympics chairman, made the point crystal-clear in a letter to the lawmakers. Yet Silver and Bruno stall, all the while professing to support the city's Olympics bid 1,000%.

Obviously, they don't. If they did, their vote of approval would be well on the way to the IOC. Instead, they've made a promise that if and when the committee picks New York, they'll make sure a stadium gets built - which is pure eyewash. Where, pray tell, would they locate such an arena? And, if not on the West Side, who would pay for it? The taxpayers? Certainly, the money wouldn't come from the Jets, who are ready to withdraw their $1.5 billion investment and stay in Jersey.

Silver and Bruno have a say over the stadium because, with Gov. Pataki, they are members of the Public Authorities Control Board. That panel has jurisdiction over the state borrowing needed to finance the stadium that will be built above the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's railyards. The two lawmakers have formed a tag team to stave off a vote, with Silver demanding the latest postponement.

They say they have questions and concerns about the project, this and that about its financing, this and that about litigation, all of which amounts to a hill of beans. You can only hope they're playing the time-honored, cynical Albany game of "Where's mine?"

Silver on Friday spelled out an agenda for speeding the redevelopment of lower Manhattan. He wants movement there before the city pushes office development in other communities, as the Bloomberg administration is now doing in the area near the stadium site. But Silver stated explicitly that he would not hold the stadium hostage to get what he wants. We so reported. Maybe we was had.

Asked yesterday why the speaker had again delayed a stadium vote, Silver's spokesman Skip Carrier spoke to his boss and returned to the phone citing City Hall's plan to offer incentives for West Side office development. Forget the maybe. We was had.

All these feints and dodges must stop. Silver and Bruno must take a stand, as they were elected to. They will not be able to evade accountability if New York loses the Olympics because of their deliberate, unnecessary inaction.