N.Y. / Region Cuomo, in State of State Speech, Outlines Agenda and Spending Plans By JESSE McKinley JAN. 21, 2015 ALBANY — Basking in an economic rebound but faced with an array of social concerns, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo presented his annual State of the State address on Wednesday, calling on New York lawmakers to control taxes and spending while addressing criminal justice, educational reforms and upstate fiscal difficulties. Mr. Cuomo, in a convention ballroom adjacent to the Capitol, spoke in glowing terms of his accomplishments. “The New York that we brought you for the last four years is the New York we’re going to keep bringing you,” he said. Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, particularly praised his administration’s efforts upstate, saying that part of New York was “not getting the care and attention it deserved” before he took office in 2011. Now, he said, “You feel a totally different energy.” “The days of downstate flourishing and upstate suffering are over,” he said. But the speech was also meant to set the tone both for the new legislative session and for the governor’s second term, even as he enjoys favorable ratings and hears continued whispers of broader national ambitions. Beginning with his inauguration, Mr. Cuomo has signaled he would tackle issues that transcend the state’s borders. On Wednesday, as he outlined what he is calling his “opportunity agenda” for 2015, he drove home his intention to address income equality and an eroding confidence in the social mobility once taken for granted by immigrants and native-born Americans alike. “Too many believe if you’re born poor, you’ll die poor,” he said. “That is the exact opposite of what the American dream promised.” The governor had previously announced he would seek to raise the minimum wage to $11.50 in New York City and $10.50 in the rest of the state. He affirmed that goal on Wednesday, drawing applause from the crowd. Responding to recent events in Ferguson, Mo., and Staten Island, among other places, Mr. Cuomo also announced a seven-point “justice agenda,” including allowing district attorneys the latitude to release information about a grand jury’s collective thinking when it declines to hand down an indictment of a police officer investigated over a fatality. “So people can know what actually happened,” the governor said. Mr. Cuomo also said he would name an independent monitor in fatal incidents involving police and civilians, with the power to review grand jury deliberations and to recommend special prosecutors in such cases. He proposed a statewide commission on police and community relations, to evaluate how officers interact with those they are intended to protect, and a statewide survey of race and ethnic data involving police activity. “We have nothing to hide,” he said. Along with bulletproof vests and patrol-car windows to protect police officers, and body cameras to record incidents, the governor said his agenda would “go a long way to restoring trust and restoring respect” between police and the community. “It’s a good start,” he said. In a departure from past years, Mr. Cuomo also presented his $141.6 billion plan for the state budget on Wednesday, proposing a spending increase of nearly $4 billion — which would include federal and other funding sources — while keeping the spending of state funds within his self-imposed cap of a yearly increase of 2 percent. The governor has used the better part of the past week to roll out initiatives in areas like controlling property taxes, creating jobs and improving infrastructure. He called for devoting $1.3 billion, for example, to “stabilize the New York State Thruway Authority, an agency facing a deep budget shortfall and the recent resignation of two top officials. The money would be used to help finance the $3.9 billion replacement of the Tappan Zee Bridge, and to assure upstate drivers that Thruway tolls would not increase for at least a year. In a departure from custom, Mr. Cuomo’s State of the State oration, originally scheduled for the Jan. 7 opening of the legislative session, was postponed because of the death of his father, former Gov. Mario M. Cuomo, on New Year’s Day. The governor noted that the rescheduling had meant the delivery of his budget proposal five days early, “which would’ve made my father happy.” Mr. Cuomo has trumpeted several new big-ticket plans for the coming year, including a $1.5 billion grant competition upstate, a $1 billion broadband project for rural regions and a $450 million proposal he made on Tuesday to build a 1.5-mile rail link connecting New York City’s subways and the Long Island Rail Road to La Guardia Airport. Mr. Cuomo, who was elected to a second term in November, has trumpeted his success in negotiating four straight on-time budgets. But with a new Republican majority in the State Senate, extending that streak could provide a modicum of suspense. The speech on Wednesday also set the stage for several new battles for Mr. Cuomo, including one on education, which took up a lengthy portion of his speech. “We must start treating teaching like the profession it is,” the governor said, signaling that he will pursue several major initiatives, involving evaluations of teachers and an expansion of charter schools, that face stiff opposition from the state’s powerful teachers’ unions. The governor saved some of his strongest comments for the current system used for teacher evaluations. “They are baloney,” he said of the assessments, adding, “Who are we kidding, my friends?” Mr. Cuomo said he planned to include two fiercely debated education initiatives: legislation that would expand state tuition assistance to undocumented immigrants, known as the Dream Act, and an education tax credit. But the two measures will be linked, forcing lawmakers to take both or none, a Cuomo aide said. The proposal to tie the two initiatives together was first reported on Wednesday by The Daily News. Speaking of his family’s rise from its origins as Italian immigrants to leaders of New York, Mr. Cuomo also echoed his ambitious inaugural address on New Year’s Day — delivered hours before his father’s death — saying education had become the “the great discriminator,” and adding that schools were now divided along class lines. “We have one for the rich and one for the poor,” he said. Mr. Cuomo announced that the state would offer to pay full tuition to state universities for top high school graduates if they commit to teaching for five years after graduating from college, and give students in poorly performing schools a preference in charter school selection.The governor could face broad opposition in both the Republican-controlled State Senate and the Democratic-led Assembly to a plan he unveiled on Monday for a commission that would place restrictions on the outside pay that members of the Legislature can earn, and that would study, and even possibly raise, lawmakers’ salaries. While the steady stream of announcements about the governor’s “opportunity agenda” may have robbed the occasion of some of its excitement on Wednesday, the governor was shrewd to tease out his agenda over the course of several days, said Blair Horner, the legislative director for the New York Public Interest Research Group, a government watchdog group. But publicity tactics only go so far, Mr. Horner said: “Whether or not the legislature embraces the proposals, who knows?”
Posted on: Wed, 21 Jan 2015 23:42:49 +0000
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