Governor's Speech Shows New Side

January 2008

GOV'S SPEECH SHOWS NEW SIDE

During his 2008 State of the State message, GovernorEliot Spitzer showed a desire to work with the StateLegislature, listen to more New Yorkers when shapingpolicy, and generally take a more subdued, down toearth approach to the way he runs the executive branchof our government.

The 18-page speech offered lots of crowd pleasers, including women's and children's health initiatives,more police in high crime areas, big investments inthe upstate economy, more funding for SUNY and a newfocus on preventive health care. Of special interest was the Governor's call for the creation of a $1billion fund to benefit cities in upstate New York.

If I had to pick a highlight of the speech, I'd haveto say it was the announcement that Mr. Spitzer wantedto stimulate the growth of Western New York byexpanding the University of Buffalo to the downtowncore area. The Governor's plans would promote theUniversity of Buffalo as one of its flagship programsfor smart growth by locating thousands of students and additional faculty to a new campus for medicine and health sciences in downtown Buffalo. I believe this decision will help bring new jobs, new infrastructure, and an infusion of new funding into the city. Clearly, it will build upon our already significant investment made in the Center for Excellence in Bioinformatics.

Another bright point was the Governor's call to create a bipartisan commission to reduce taxes, both for homeowners and businesses. He also hopes to create up to $1 billion in tax savings for businesses
in New York to encourage companies to move to the state or stay here.

And the other point that the Governor wanted to make was that he has no intention on raising taxes, a
commitment he made when he ran for the state's highest office.

With respect to education, Spitzer expressed his desire to implement a $4 billion endowment for public
colleges. He foresees the hiring of 2,000 new full-time professors at SUNY and CUNY, and passage of
legislation that would cover full tuition at those schools for New York's returning military veterans.
Not surprisingly he made no mention of tuition rates for SUNY students for the coming year, which may be a contentious issue in the months to come.

The Governor also received a round of applause for his idea to redeploy State Troopers to upstate
communities with the greatest pockets of violence, a move which would help us curb crime in Buffalo's
toughest neighborhoods.

The tone of Governor Spitzer's speech indicated to me that he wants to put aside the differences that exist between him and the Legislature, and that he looks forward to doing the business of the people. We must all work together to get this state moving again, and we must not continually be distracted by partisanship ploys that only serve to delay the work we must do for the people we were elected to serve.

The Governor now knows that he needs to look to those of us in the trenches to gain a better understanding of how we can steer this ship, that we call state government, into calm waters. We'll see how it plays out when he announces his Executive Budget in a couple of weeks.

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