CUOMO’S CHALLENGE

Andrew M. Cuomo is now New York State’s 56th governor, and probably its most important one to date. Son of a governor, the Queens native, who graduated from Archbishop Molloy High School, has taken the oath of office to run our government which became the poster child of a dysfunctional, corrupt — often comical — gridlocked gang of fools.
Cuomo has accepted the challenge of restoring the pride of our state’s 19 million residents in our government and getting its fiscal house in order, radically redesigning its governmental structures and restoring integrity and performance to the legislative body.
We wish him well and hope that he is heard by all the currently elected representatives. Cuomo has plans. He will need their help to turn our sorry state around.
In his State of the State speech last week, Cuomo detailed his program to:
? Close the $10B budget deficit without raising taxes or borrowing.
? Freeze public employees’ salaries for one year.
? Limit spending growth to the rate of inflation.
? Resizing government by reducing agencies and commissions.
? Redesigning the Medicaid program and find cost savings.
? Restructure education for better results for the same or less money.
? Restoring ethics to Albany with campaign reforms including public financing.
We know Cuomo is on the right track, we support him in his call to arms.
Cuomo will sink or swim, fail or succeed, depending on the amount and breath of cooperation that he garners from Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos. Both of these leaders are key to overthrowing the status quo which ground our legislature to a halt under Governor David A. Paterson.
We have every confidence that Cuomo will be able to succeed and we all will get to see how effective a leader he will be when the first state budget ¬ – due in less than 90 days, on March 31 ¬– is hammered out and passed.
Good Luck Andy.