New Yorkers may be wondering just who that guy was in Albany screaming his head off on Wednesday about, supposedly, the State of the State — and where the heck was Gov. Cuomo?
Because, let’s face it: The man at the mic sure didn’t sound like the same Andrew Cuomo who’s been serving as governor for the past two years.
Indeed, Cuomo’s heavily left-leaning, kitchen-sink agenda — and the near-hysterical manner in which he pitched it — seemed to mark a sharp turn in his two-year-old term. And for average New Yorkers, the shift may mean bad news ahead.
Cuomo made his gun gambit the centerpiece of his message, and he got the national attention he no doubt sought. But a host of out-of-the-blue initiatives in other areas effectively left his old agenda — economic growth, state-spending restraint, competent and honest governance, tax relief — in the dust.
In Cuomo’s first State of the State Address in 2011, he wisely talked about New York’s out-of-control budgets, its highest-in-the-nation taxes, its failure to attract and keep businesses and people here.
He decried the state’s dismal economic climate and Albany’s nationally mocked dysfunction.
Cuomo vowed action: Last year’s speech was titled “Building a New New York.”
And then . . . nothing.
Or, perhaps, a step here, a step there — but with no real follow-up.
Take taxes: “We are going to have to confront the tax situation,” he said in 2011. “We have to hold the line” and “reduce taxes in the future . . . The people of this state cannot afford to pay any more taxes, period.”
Later that year, Cuomo raised taxes.
Yes, he did manage to cap local property-tax hikes.
But then he failed to provide local jurisdictions with the one thing they needed to make those caps work: meaningful relief from state mandates that force districts to spend.
Instead, districts today are squeezed.
Some have had to find ways around the cap, much to homeowners’ dismay. Some have tapped reserves and may have to cut core services next year. Some don’t know what to do — and are scrambling to stave off financial disaster.
And yet, judging from Cuomo’s address Wednesday, he thinks his work is finished.
Take the economy: Does the gov seriously think he can shake off Upstate’s economic doldrums with (maybe) a few casinos, as he’s proposed? Or $1 billion worth of Solyndra-like “green jobs” projects?
Or a rafting contest? Please.
Nor is it likely that Cuomo’s minimum-wage hike will suddenly lure armies of new businesses here — when they’ll be able to pay workers less elsewhere.
Meanwhile, the gov had nothing to say about a realistic, promising new industry for Upstate that’s merely awaiting his OK: natural-gas extraction through hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking.”
But it wasn’t just what the governor had to say Wednesday, but also how he said it: that is, by screaming it at the top of his lungs. (Paging Howard Dean . . . )
Cuomo — who’s been slammed by other Democrats as insufficiently liberal — insisted yesterday he’s made no “left turn.”
“I’ve been going straight all along,” he said. And he’d surely reject claims that his ambitions transcend the state’s borders.
But Cuomo’s left-leaning initiatives and his irrepressible need for national attention — evidenced by the mere volume of his voice — certainly suggest otherwise.
New Yorkers can only hope they won’t be sold out.