ALBANY — Gov.-elect Andrew Cuomo pledged yesterday not to repeat one of Eliot Spitzer’s biggest mistakes. And, no, it’s not that one.
Cuomo, in his first interview since winning a landslide victory in Tuesday’s election, said the public shouldn’t expect him to deliver on the high-profile promise Spitzer made as he was about to take office four years ago: “On day one, everything changes.”
“If someone wants to say everything should change on day one, I’m going to say, ‘Been there, done that,’ ” said Cuomo during an interview on Albany’s Talk 1300-AM.
“If people expect to see progress, and realistic progress, no one who’s at all well informed would say everything’s going to change on day one,” Cuomo continued.
Even before taking office in 2007 Spitzer alienated the Legislature and, within a month of taking office, worsened that relationship by calling himself a “f – – king steamroller.”
Spitzer resigned in March 2008 in a high-priced-hooker scandal with few accomplishments.
Cuomo campaigned on a sweeping set of economic and ethics reforms that included freezing state spending and public-employee salaries, reducing the size of government, capping local property taxes and ending the state’s notorious pay-to-play culture.
Cuomo, meanwhile, said he had begun focusing on finding top-flight talent for his new administration but said the task was complicated by the state government’s reputation for dysfunction and corruption.
“That is not an easy sell right now,” Cuomo said of his early recruiting efforts.
“You know, part of this, the decline, part of the degradation, you have to try to get people to want to go and work there and be part of that,” he continued.
“That is going to be a work in progress. You start to turn it around, you start to develop some credibility, and then people will start to join in.
“You’re not going to turn that around in January, but I want to start to at least put up a new banner that says, ‘Open for business. Public service can be an honorable profession,’ ” Cuomo continued.
Cuomo’s advisers believe that the new governor must move swiftly to achieve budget cuts and ethics reforms after taking office during his “honeymoon” period.
He is expected to encounter resistance from Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan), a lawyer with undisclosed outside income and a powerful ally of the public-employee unions and health-care-industry lobbyists who fear the impact of Cuomo’s austerity plans.
“Cuomo’s reputation for his whole four-year term will be made or broken by what he achieves during his first few months in office,” said a longtime state observer.
“Does he hold the line on spending, does he cap property taxes, and does he win passage of true ethics reform? Those are the questions,” the observer continued.