ALBANY — For state lawmakers, Tuesday was one of the busiest days so far this year. Hundreds of New Yorkers converged here to lobby them for relief from budget cuts. Both houses of the Legislature passed separate spending plans, and their leaders held their first budget negotiating session.  Yet amid the news conferences, floor debates and shouting protesters, one figure was absent: Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo.  Mr. Cuomo, who is in his 11th week as governor, has taken a liking to Albany. He has spent weekends at the Executive Mansion and has shown little interest in retreating to New York City or elsewhere in the state, as was the habit of his recent predecessors. Which raised the question: Where in the world, or at least in New York State, was Mr. Cuomo?  The mystery — at least to the extent it could be called that — began Monday night, when the governor’s press office released Mr. Cuomo’s public schedule for Tuesday. It said he would be in Essex County, but it listed no public events.  Granted, Essex County is hardly Bermuda. But since Mr. Cuomo took office in January, his public schedule had not placed him anywhere other than Albany, Westchester County (where he lives with his girlfriend, Sandra Lee, the Food Network celebrity) or New York City, unless he was traveling to make a public appearance.  Aides to Mr. Cuomo took pains to avoid having Mr. Cuomo’s day trip turn into a big Albany mystery. One of them, who gave permission for the conversation to be recounted here, offered reporters a heads-up about his plans on Monday night, on the condition that they not report it.  But others at the Capitol inevitably wondered what the governor was doing, and, sure enough, a political blog asked, “Where in NY Is Governor Cuomo?”  On Tuesday afternoon, the not-very-mysterious mystery was solved. A local newspaper, The Adirondack Daily Enterprise, found Mr. Cuomo at a Mobil station in Saranac Lake and posted a picture of him on its Web site to prove it.  In a brief interview as he pumped gas, Mr. Cuomo — wearing blue jeans and a rather sporty pair of sunglasses — said he had taken his daughters skiing at Whiteface Mountain in Wilmington and then spent some time at Saranac Lake.  “We’ve been coming up for 20 years,” Mr. Cuomo told the newspaper. “I really love it and can’t get enough of it.” (Ms. Lee recently told the magazine Us Weekly that, along with Capri, Italy, Saranac Lake was her favorite vacation spot.)  An aide to Mr. Cuomo noted that Tuesday was an ideal time for the governor to take a personal day, since lawmakers had been scheduled for weeks to spend the day debating and approving their one-house budgets and Mr. Cuomo had no role in that process.  As for how the governor was found in Essex County, which at about 1,900 square miles is larger than the state of Rhode Island? It turns out that around noon on Tuesday, a reporter for The Daily Enterprise spotted a pair of black sport utility vehicles parked outside a bank branch in Saranac Lake, with two members of the governor’s State Police security detail standing nearby.  When the troopers got in the vehicles a few minutes later and drove away, the newspaper decided to follow them and eventually wound up at the Mobil station, where Mr. Cuomo emerged from a Cadillac Escalade and started to fill its tank.  The governor pumped his own gas because the Escalade is a family car, not a state vehicle, his spokesman, Josh Vlasto, said.  Mr. Vlasto added that Mr. Cuomo had returned to Albany on Tuesday evening to hold a staff meeting.  Our political reporters, and occasional guests, offer you a peek inside Albany and City Hall. Check back every Wednesday.
Governing Class: It was pretty hectic in Albany, but Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo did not think his presence was necessary, so he decided it was a good opportunity to take his daughters skiing.