Our opinion: Albany County wants to buy the Family Court building that it’s been renting. It’s paid dearly for it already.

Well, Albany County taxpayers, does your government have a deal for you. Turns out that you — as in, all 304,000 county residents — just might be able to own that spiffy Family Court building across from the Palace Theatre after all.

What, you thought owned it already?

Nope, it merely seems like it’s the county’s own building. Funny what some $2 million a year in rent payments can make some people think.

Too bad that one condition of any sale agreement that the County Legislature might be able to reach with the real owner, Columbia Development, can’t stipulate a closing date of, oh, some time back in 2005.

That’s when the county started leasing what then was a brand new facility to house a court system that was overwhelmed by the need for more space.

How bad a deal did that turn out to be?

Well, rent payments alone on the courthouse now have exceeded $13.5 million. Oh, and factor in taxes — yes, taxpayers, you’re on the hook for that bill, too — and it’s more like $15 million.

Some lease agreement, isn’t it — with eight more years and $16.6 million in rent payments remaining?

And all for a building that’s assessed at just $8.5 million.

There’s good reason to suspect, meanwhile, that the $15 million the county has sunk into the courthouse already is quite close to what it cost to build it.

Oh, the questions that need to be asked as County Executive Daniel McCoy and legislature Chairman Shawn Morse try to negotiate their way out of one really bad deal and into another with complications of its own.

How much should the county be willing to pay — with borrowed money, alas — for a building that it would have been better off owning all along?

That’s hard to say, maddeningly enough. The appraised value of the courthouse, $23.6 million, is misleading: It includes the steady payment of that staggering amount of annual rent. It would make sense to factor in such payments if the building were to be sold to a private party. But it makes no sense here. It’s not like the county, once it owned the courthouse, would collect $2 million a year in rent from itself.

What happens if there’s no deal?

Then the fiscal picture gets even murkier for a county government already steeped in fiscal gimmickry. This is the same County Legislature, remember, that barely cut a $565 million budget down to $557 million, yet slashed a proposed 19 percent property tax increase by more than half, to 8 percent. It did so, in large part, by betting on unrealistically high sales tax revenue.

That same budget also assumes savings — prematurely, typically — of about $1 million a year by buying the courthouse rather than continuing to rent it.

Talk about outstanding debts, as in seven years of woefully insufficient accountability.

Family Court is where cases are heard involving seemingly every hardship that can afflict children and families. But where do taxpayers go to show their displeasure at paying so dearly for a courthouse with nothing to show for it except for bills and more bills?