Governor Patrick has commendably vetoed a bad bill to boost Massachusetts state workers’ pensions. The worst thing about the measure is that it would delay starting to pay for them until 2024! In other words, legislators wanted to curry favor with the public-employee unions but without offending the public by forcing higher taxes now. In this evasion, they would have saddled future taxpayers with even more debt (and perhaps a lower state bond rating) than years of irresponsible giveaways have already hit them with. But then what do the legislative backers of this measure care? They’ll be long out of office — or dead — in 2024!

The vetoed measure would boost the annual cost-of-living increase for pensioners by $120, on top of the $360 they get now every year. The governor had wanted to limit the pension increases to those pensioners getting under $40,000 a year in their public-sector pensions, which, if you’re going to do this sort of thing, is a lot fairer than also giving increases to well-heeled pensioners, of which there are more than a few among retired state workers.

The legislators then tried to maneuver around that condition by a provision that would have done away with that limitation after a year. Apparently, they hoped that no one would notice. As usual with such giveaways, there was little public discussion of the change. But the governor wouldn’t let them get away with it.

All this recalls how the federal government’s politicians, via election-year tax rebates and proposals to briefly eliminate the federal gasoline tax and invade the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, also appeal to the myopia of the people and to special interests. The attitude always seems to be: “Get it off my desk and on to somebody else’s.” But then, that’s human, not just politicians’ nature.

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The governor also showed some backbone by rejecting special-interest legislation that would have exempted one insurance company — Savings Bank Life Insurance — from a measure that bars all life-insurance companies from price discrimination in premiums on the basis of sex. Such measures aimed at giving one well-placed individual or one enterprise an unfair competitive edge are among the most reprehensible spawn of a legislative session, and are sadly common in the deal-making and confusion of the last days of a legislative session.

We commend Deval Patrick’s display of backbone.