ALBANY — It’s the most powerful speech by a New York governor since Hugh Carey faced the catastrophic state and city fiscal crises of 1975 and declared that the “Days of Wine and Roses” were over.
Newly sworn-in Gov. Cuomo, facing an even worse financial crisis, yesterday delivered a powerful, emotional and persuasive pledge to save the state from fiscal catastrophe by defeating the politicians and special interests who have come close to driving New York into the ground.
Cuomo’s inaugural address identified the problems perfectly: runaway taxes, public corruption, massive job losses, lost faith in a government led by officials who put the “whisper of the lobbyists before the cries of the people” and a government quite literally locked behind barriers and sealed doors.
And he didn’t mince words.
“State government has grown too large, and we can’t afford it,” said Cuomo, bluntly adding, “This state has no future if it’s going to be the tax capital of the nation.”
Cuomo blamed past governors and the Legislature for the state’s severe problems and, in a clearly aimed shot at Democratic Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, decried leaders more interested in “achieving a political consensus in a political conference” than “providing governmental leadership for the people of the state.”
Cuomo lashed out at the “special interests who have ruled our governments for years,” a reference to a horde of lobbyists and the public-employee and health-care unions who employ them.
He also movingly named some of the victims of New York state’s decline: unemployed city construction workers, Long Island taxpayers “imprisoned in their homes” by high property taxes and lost property values and young people “across upstate who are leaving because they believe there is no economic future left.”
Finally and most importantly, Cuomo offered more than a glimpse of the strategy he’ll use to try to bring about the fundamental changes needed to turn New York around.
Rejecting claims that a governor doesn’t possess enough power to beat the special interests, Cuomo insisted, “A governor’s potential power is limitless.”
“The potential power of the governor is to mobilize the people of New York. Only the people’s voice can silence the calls of the special interests in the halls of the Capitol.”
Cuomo, to that end, plans to launch an aggressive statewide barnstorming tour next week to begin to mobilize the public on behalf of his planned reforms in a way that’s not been seen before.
Separately, he’s helping raise a $10 million-plus war chest to back up the mobilization with a sophisticated media campaign.
“There is no more time to waste. It is a time for deeds not words, and results not rhetoric,” Cuomo declared yesterday.
To which the overwhelming number of worried New Yorkers must already be responding, “Amen.”