Opinion

A gov tough enough to learn

The irony of Hugh Carey’s brilliant success as New York’s 51st governor is that he came into office hoping to govern as a traditional liberal Democrat but then transformed himself into a national model of fiscal conservatism as he sought to clean up a massive Republican mess.

Not only did Carey have the guts, tenacity and intelligence in 1975 to quickly recognize the imminent danger to the state left by the profligate tenures of Gov. Nelson Rockefeller and Mayor John Lindsay, he had the wisdom to assemble the last great team of fiscal and government managers at the Capitol to tackle the enormous problems.

He also brought into the process the top leadership of the New York City municipal unions, making them part of what became the successful effort to bail out a bankrupt city while preventing the state from becoming awash in red ink as well.

As a reporter for The Post as well as the Albany Times-Union, I covered much of Hugh Carey’s first term in office and all of his second. One thing that stood out the most during those tense and dangerous times was that no matter how big the accomplishments and the egos of those working for Carey — people like David Burke, Peter Goldmark, Judah Gribetz, Richard Ravitch, Felix Rohatyn and Robert Morgado — they all treated “Hughey” with a respect, deference and even awe that was borne of his recognized brilliance, and his extraordinary commitment to saving the state.

It was under Carey that the state created Big Mac and the Emergency Financial Control Board that not only staved off city bankruptcy but set the city on a course of open and honest bookkeeping that prevented the city’s spendthrift politicians from putting New York in harm’s way again.

And it was under Carey that the state became more sensitive than it had ever been to the dangers of Rockefeller’s irresponsible “moral obligation” borrowing and moved to reform its finances along the lines of “generally accepted accounting principals,” or GAAP, an acronym that became a buzzword for sound finances during Carey’s early years.

While Carey was successful in making sure the city would avoid future crises, he failed to win the sweeping state fiscal reforms that could have avoided the embarrassing chaos that came to define Albany in the post -Carey years, with its chronically late and irresponsibly unbalanced budgets.

One of the most striking things for journalists who covered the Carey years and then went on to cover future governors was to see how men such as George Pataki and David Paterson all but abandoned what had been learned at such great cost during the fiscal crisis.

Albany, however, may finally be on the road to improvement, thanks to an early decision Carey made just after taking office in 1975: As his secretary of state, he picked a then-failed candidate for lieutenant governor — Mario Cuomo, whom Carey then tapped to be his running mate for lieutenant governor in 1978.

At Mario’s side was his young and promising son Andrew, then a mere law student but also a student of Carey’s governing techniques — especially his use of disparate coalitions to achieve politically difficult compromises. The current Gov. Cuomo (who also learned a good deal about successes and failures in governing during his father’s three terms as governor) this year closed a projected $10 billion budget gap without raising taxes and fees and won passage of a historic gay-marriage bill that required a coalition with Republicans to achieve.

Many members of Carey’s famously large family backed Andrew Cuomo for governor last year, convinced that the son of their father’s onetime lieutenant governor was the best man to carry on their father’s impressive legacy.

Post State Editor Fredric U. Dicker has covered the state Capitol for over 30 years.