Key business leaders are privately portraying Gov. Cuomo’s widely panned state budget as a bitter betrayal of two years of promises to reverse New York’s longstanding anti-business reputation.
“In a single stroke, Cuomo has reversed all he claimed to be doing during his first two years to make this state at least a little friendly to the private sector,’’ said a leading business official who, like several others, demanded anonymity for fear of the governor’s political retaliation.
“He’s handed the state back to [spendthrift Assembly Speaker Sheldon] Silver,’’ the source continued.
While business leaders weren’t surprised that Cuomo won approval for a costly minimum-wage hike — he’d pledged to do so for months — they were shocked he agreed with Silver (D-Manhattan) to hand out tax “rebate’’ checks of $350 or more to a million families when he’s up for re-election next year, at a cost of $370 million.
“That’s one of the most blatantly political moves ever. Boss Tweed would have been proud,’’ said another prominent business leader.
Cuomo, elected on claims of being a fiscal moderate with pledges of greater openness, or “transparency,’’ in government dealings, never mentioned the election-year “rebates’’ in his State of the State Address or in his original budget proposal.
He resorted to sneaking them into the state’s fiscal plan at the last moment.
Business leaders are also infuriated that Cuomo refused to permit a scheduled drop in a “temporary’’ assessment on energy costs for all consumers to take effect, in effect a tax increase of more than $200 million a year.
“We were resigned to the minimum wage, but the failure to act on the energy surcharge was very damaging, and it illustrates the governor’s lack of interest in fixing the underlying tax-climate issue in this state,’’ said a well-known business leader who backed Cuomo’s election in 2010.
“And it is incredible that at the same time the energy surcharge was being continued, they’re going to spend $370 million to give people checks in an election year.’’
Cuomo also went back on his word to end the “temporary’’ surcharge on wealthy taxpayers — which during his 2010 campaign he said was damaging the state’s ability to hold and attract corporate executives.
Cuomo even likened his promised elimination of the tax to dad Mario Cuomo’s deeply felt moral opposition to capital punishment.
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A Cuomo administration source is flatly denying the governor’s claim that his new anti-gun SAFE Act was carefully drafted, saying the governor himself wasn’t even aware of some provisions when it was hastily enacted into law.
“The governor thought the limit on the size of [gun] magazines would only apply to assault-style rifles, not to handguns,’’ said the source.
“That’s why there’s the big problem now with handguns, among other things in the statute.’’
The legal sale of virtually all semiautomatic handguns will soon be impossible because Cuomo’s law limits the size of bullet-holding magazines to seven shots, virtually none of which are manufactured for sale.
“Much of what’s in the law was drafted by people connected to Mayor Bloomberg and the Brady Center, not by the governor’s staff,” the source said. “That’s why there are so many problems with it.’’
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Meanwhile, opponents of Cuomo’s SAFE Act were outraged last week with the disclosure that the state would pay $500 bounties to persons reporting the illegal ownership of weapons.
“This is turning neighbor against neighbor, and it is rubbing peoples’ noses in it,’’ said New York Rifle and Pistol Association President Tom King, who has predicted that hundreds of thousands of owners of assault-style rifles that must be registered under the new law would refuse to obey it.
“If you thought people were disturbed and upset about the new law, they are just totally outraged over this bounty,” King added.