After much self-congratulation this week, Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York and legislative leaders announced an annual budget that spends too much — $150 billion — for too little. Mr. Cuomo bragged that it is a budget “that all New Yorkers can be proud of.” Yet the details of this last-minute jumble of a budget yield very little for most people to celebrate.

Not long ago, Mr. Cuomo raised hopes of change in Albany’s corrupt culture when he threatened to delay the budget in order to achieve real reform. He settled instead for a mostly on-time budget and a few modest changes that would make it harder for legislators to live high on per diem expenses and would require more disclosure for independent campaign expenses. But after all the scandals and arrests involving state lawmakers, this should have been the year for bigger things.

At a minimum, for instance, one would have expected more disclosure requirements for legislators who are lawyers, especially after Sheldon Silver, the former speaker of the Assembly, was charged with fraud and extortion in connection with work done for private law firms. Yet this budget’s disclosure reforms offer plenty of exemptions.

The law offers a list of reasons for keeping a client’s name secret, and, if that is not loophole enough, lawmakers can appeal to two government bodies to grant other exceptions. In the end, the real question will be what’s left for these lawyer-politicians to reveal. As Blair Horner of the New York Public Interest Research Group put it, the ethics reform is “more loophole than law.”