1991 New York State of the State Address

Governor Mario M. Cuomo: Thank you very much, Stan Lundine. Dr. Bruno, my distinguished colleagues in the leadership of this state. Members of the legislature. Chief Judge Sol Wachtler and the judges of our distinguished New York State Court of Appeals. Ladies and gentlemen, before anything else, I think we ought to say a word about the one thing that occupies our thoughts this afternoon, our brave men and women in Saudi Arabia. They and our leaders have the support of everybody in this state. They have our prayers, in these harrowing moments. All of us, I'm sure, in this room and in this state offer our prayers as well, that our leaders will somehow be able to resolve the crisis in the Middle East without the further destruction of human lives. And at this moment, that this... And I'm sure we all pray that this moment can then indeed become the beginning of what our president has called a new world order of peace and progress. 

Not many governors in the history of this state have had the opportunity to address this distinguished body as often as I and I am profoundly grateful for the privilege. I'm grateful too for the privilege of working side by side with veteran leaders and a seasoned legislature that have many times, and as recently as only weeks ago, proven their ability to handle the most difficult problems, putting the good of the state, in the end, ahead of their personal and political preferences. And I tell you, we will need that strength very badly in the difficult days ahead as we confront fiscal problems more severe than any that this state has faced since the Great Depression and maybe more severe than any that this state has ever faced. And I tell you without any doubt at all that the implications of the budget that I will present to you will jar even the most experienced of you. Those implications, I believe, could have a pivotal effect on our entire history. 

Nineteen ninety-one can be one of the most important years in our history. It could be a year that devastates the state's fiscal credibility and our capacity to meet the needs of our people for years to come. Or it could be a year in which we somehow transform crisis into opportunity. We cannot avoid all the pain, but we can use this ordeal to inspire changes that can help lead us to a new era of progress, if we deal with our huge fiscal imbalance without dismantling what we've already built, with the investments of the last eight years. And if while doing that, we focus our priorities, reform our methods and renew our mission. Let me give you a snapshot of where I believe we are economically and fiscally. And it shouldn't take too long, because, frankly, given the nature of the news I'm about to share with you, I don't expect to be interrupted often with applause. 

Currently, New York State, like much of the rest of the nation, is slipping deeper and deeper into the greyness of a national recession, which has created a crisis for us by both drying up our revenues from the economy and at the same time increasing our social burdens. Now, while only the national government can influence significantly the economic tide that carries the 50 state boats, we in this state can not afford to wait for Washington's help, or to use their failure as an excuse for not doing all that we can for ourselves. And indeed in fairness to us all, we have not waited until now to respond to the problems created for us by this national recession. Only about four weeks ago, and I'm not sure the public fully appreciates what happened here, but only about four weeks ago together, you and I closed a billion dollar gap in a budget that had only eight billion dollars remaining in it. And you did it without borrowing and without raising taxes. I wonder when the last time in this country was that that occurred? And none of us enjoy doing it. It was hard. It was personally distressful and it was politically unpopular and it was only the beginning. The work ahead will be harder. It will be more painful and it will be even more unpopular. Make no mistake about it. And it will not be over quickly. Because real and hurtful as it is, the recession is only a symptom of deeper, fundamental problems in our nation's economy, which are making this recession more damaging for New York and all states across the country. 

The recession, as you know, reduces states' revenues from the economy. After a decade in which the federal government, even in good times, sent us less and less help each year to deal with what were concededly national problems. Washington declared war on drugs, commiserated over and over with the homeless, announced that rebuilding our roads and bridges was a national concern. And we all agreed. But then Washington reduced its resources as it increased its rhetoric. Washington, not Republicans, not Democrats, Washington, all of them. The president's a Republican. The Congress is led now by Democrats. All of them reduced what they sent us. Even as the decibel level of their speeches grew mightier. As a practical matter, Washington dumped these federal concerns on to state and local governments, as new state and local costs for education, for health care, for law enforcement exploded. And now the cumulative weight of this decade long shift of the burden, combined with the shrinking revenues as a result of the national recession, is crushing many states, including New York. 

Listen to these numbers. Thirty-one states out of 50, that are home to 85 percent of the American people are being driven into a sea of red ink. Eighty five percent of the American people, some of those states have deficits larger and more threatening than anything they have ever experienced. 

And this isn't just a book keeper's nightmare. Surely it is that. This is people feeling pain, real pain. It's the anguish of hundreds of families whose fathers and mothers, whose sons and daughters have already lost new York State jobs. And it's the pain of thousands more to come. That's real pain, you're not feeling it. I'm not. But they are. And it's worse because this recession comes after about 10 years in which our nation produced more millionaires, and that's a wonderful sign of prosperity, and it's good. And we encourage it. We wish more of them lived here. But while that was happening, our nation left most middle class families and people struggling to get into the middle class, swimming against the tide, trying desperately to keep their heads above water as jobs, wealth and dreams flowed overseas. You know the syndrome, we now buy from foreign competitors, goods that we used to make and sell to them, and we buy those goods from them with our dollars. And then because our deficit is so big at the end of the year, we have to borrow back our own dollars and pay them interest for it. 

And the jobs have gone and the wealth has gone and the dreams have gone for many. And the effects of this gradually weakening national economy can now be seen all around us. I'm not making it up. Banks are being seized in some states. People are frightened, confused. All across this country, white collar workers and wage earners are forced onto unemployment lines. A million this year. It's as though it didn't happen, because it didn't happen to us. But a million families feel it in this country. Working couples doubting that they'll ever be able to afford a house in the neighborhood they grew up in. More and more people fearing that a lifetime of hard work can no longer assure even a modest degree of economic security.

 It's difficult for us to relate to. We're doing well, but this is sad and it's dangerous too. The inherited expectation that each generation could earn at least the comfort and security of Momma and Poppa and the generation before, and probably more. The taking for granted of the idea that things would get better, that we would build on the achievements of the last generation. That is a defining American belief. Lose that vision of the American dream and we lose the nation as we have known it. 

And so we must find the strength not to let that happen in New York. Even without the help that we deserve from Washington, because there's no point in wasting time asking them for it. They won't have it. Their problem is larger than ours. Whatever the causes, we don't have time to to conduct that argument in too much detail. We have to do it ourselves. Now we can, we know we can, because for most of this century, the Empire State has shown this country how to keep the dream alive by giving generations of seekers the chance to earn their own way to security, to comfort, even to affluence through our progressive, free enterprise system in New York State, under Democrats, under Republicans for most of the century. And at the same time, always we have helped those who will never be able to provide for themselves in the free enterprise economy, for reasons we don't understand, because they were born disabled, because God allows them to grow old and weak alone. We've always felt a special mission to take care of them. People who, without the help of the whole community, express through government would not be able to survive with decency. That's a special part of our mission. 

 Now, preserving this state as a place that provides opportunity to the able and protection to the defenseless. That must be our goal now, no matter how difficult the obstacles. It will not be easy. The immediate goal is to live within our means. Closing the gap between what we would have proposed to spend and our diminished resources. It's essential that we do this because if we do not maintain fiscal integrity by taking this bitter medicine, then we lose the capacity to pursue the mission. Then having done that, our ultimate challenge while balancing the budget is to keep alive the vision of America, here in New York, giving our people the chance to thrive by helping them become participants and shareholders in a strong New York state economy. 

The message before you, shorter than last year's, and the budget to come, charts the course that I propose we follow in meeting those challenges. And everywhere in that message and in that budget, you will see a candid recognition that our fiscal emergency will require great sacrifice, even wrenching readjustment. And throughout both those documents, you will also see that I have taken great pains to assure that the sacrifices are distributed fairly among all the people of this state who can bear sacrifice, with no elite, exempt class protected by political power and no easy victims offered up because they lack political influence. There will be no sacred cows and there will be no sacrificial lambs either. At the same time, you will see proposals that will use this moment of challenge constructively, not through substantial new expenditures, but through refocusing, reform and renewal, through sharpening our priorities and improving the things that we can do better: economic development, criminal justice, social services, surely education, mental health while reinforcing the things we already do well. 

I recommend your close attention to all the details set out in the message. But I ask you to give particular consideration to the areas I will mention for you now briefly. First, our fiscal reforms. Last year's reforms were unprecedented. The management and productivity commissions, the expenditure cap, the end of the spring borrowing. These were very, very good things to do. Very valuable things. I applaud the leaders, the comptroller, for being involved in them. Now we need to implement them and we need to embellish these reforms with consensus forecasting with a new fiscal year. And we'll have to give that a lot of thought. But we definitely need a new fiscal year and a timely budget. God forbid we have, again, the debacle we had last year. Let's all make up our mind. Forget about who did it. Let's not let it happen again. 

 We need a new relationship with local governments. We've talked about this a lot. Now it's time to do it. A new relationship with local governments as the federal government has abandoned its responsibility to state and local governments, and it has, you look at the graph, you will see that each year they gave have given a smaller proportion of the whole budget to these national concerns at the state and local level. And as they did that, we gave more and more. We have strained to fill the gap created by the federal government. I don't believe for a moment, frankly, that any appreciable number of the public that elected or reelected you understands it. But that's the fact, that the federal government gave less, we gave more. And if you put the two graphs over one another, they would create something of a cross. You'd see the federal government coming down to the local governments, us going up and X would mark the spot where we did what we were supposed to do and they didn't do what they're supposed to do. We right now send in local assistance back to the local governments, 70 percent of all the tax money we raise. We pay the price for raising it politically. We take the heat for raising the taxes. We collect the money. We send it back to the local governments, 70 percent. But it's still not enough. The local governments still some of them feel overburdened. And I look forward to working with you and with Mayor Dinkins of the city of New York, our largest local government, with other mayors, with other county executives, with other local officials all through the state to lessen the burden on them. How do you do that if you don't have wealth to give them, by relieving them of some of the mandates that we now impose. I will offer you, I will offer you the most significant change in our relationship in many years. A long list of reduced mandates that could save local governments hundreds of millions of dollars a year. And all of you who wrote in your newsletters that the real estate taxes are too high and we're shifting burdens, the newsletters in the minority are always a little more fulsome in their rhetoric, for whatever reason. Pease, now is the time to get the bill passed. Then you'll have a...then you can really write a newsletter when we get this bill passed. Over two hundred million dollars of relief, The Mandate Relief Bill. 

 As I've noted, beyond finding better ways to manage our resources and to divide the pie fairly, we must also be more inventive in finding ways to enlarge that pie by making New York's free enterprise economy more prosperous and more inclusive. But to do that, we have to reinforce all the supports on which any long term economic growth must rest. And the economy and economic growth is the key to our future success. Remember, there are only two places we can get wealth. One is from the federal government sending it to us. The other is us creating it out of our free enterprise economy. We don't have a money machine like Washington. We cannot create money, not to say wealth. The only two sources we have are Washington and our own free enterprise economy. Washington will be sending us less and less. We're not going to accept that easily, but we can predict it fairly confidently for the time being, they'll send us less. Well, then where will you get your wealth?

There's only one place, from your free enterprise economy. It has to be stronger. Private business has to do better. They have to buy more. They have to sell more. That must be our direction and emphasis. For whom? For the rich business people, well it's good for them. And we applaud them and we want to see them do well. But we do it so that we can create the wealth that you need to take care of those people who will never be able to handle a job. The wealth that we need to take care of the people who are disabled, the people who grow old, the people who are drug addicted, the people who need to be educated, the people who need to be cared for, who have no one else to do it because there are aren't enough and a thousand points of light to do it from the community alone. The wealth we need to do that, we will get from the economy. Now, how do we strengthen the economy? One major difference between us and the federal government. The federal government has tried to do it for two years by doing one thing. Then forget, Democrat and Republican, because it wasn't really like that. Both sides joined in this philosophy. Their philosophy was give as much wealth back to the wealthy people as you can and the rest will happen automatically. They will invest it in business and the engine of the economy will get so excited it will produce jobs and strength for everybody. It didn't work. They put more wealth back into the hands of the wealthy. But it didn't get invested in business. They were off by about two trillion dollars. We now have the largest deficit, the largest debt in history. The jobs have gone overseas. What they left out is what we have always known, certainly in the last eight years in this state. That, of course, you need capital investments for business, of course capital is important, but we need other things as well. You need technological excellence. You need a strong, viable infrastructure. You need, you need clean, plentiful, affordable energy. There is no national energy plan. You need an environment that's capable of sustaining healthful and desirable life and of supplying needed natural resources. And most of all, Washington forgot the most important factor, the human factor. You need resources in the form of capital. You need human resources as well. You need a strong, skilled and motivated workforce. That's the basic formula for growth. All of these things at the same time. And that's what we've been doing here in New York. That's the formula we've followed for eight years and it's the formula we have to follow now, even in this difficult year. Now, we will not have a great deal of wealth to invest in all these props to the economy, but be consoled by the recollection that you have already over the last eight years invested very generously in key ingredients of the long term growth plan, like education, three and a half times inflation rate just since I've been governor or thereabouts/ Like the infrastructure, remember the bond issues? Like the economic development programs, we have invested. Some people mocked us for spending too much. I don't think we did. We invested in the ingredients of economic growth. Most of all people, the decade of the child, one billion, four hundred million dollars more over the last three and a half years, a good investment in human resources. If compassion doesn't suggest to you that you ought to take care of these children, your commonsense should. If you're too macho to feel sorry for them or to love them, if you think that's too soft, then think about them as the workforce of the 21st century. We invested in them, not just to salve our conscience, but to build our futures. And that was good. And what it means is we have a foundation here, even if we don't have additional monies to invest in large amounts this year. 

What we can do is strengthen the whole economic growth series of props through some new thinking instead of new spending. Let me give you just quickly some ideas that I want you to think about and that we will push very hard on you right at the beginning of the session. First, you need capital. You know, about the credit crunch. You know, that small business which produces most of the jobs, is having a hard time getting money, even if they're in good shape, even if the bank is in reasonably good shape for a whole lot of reasons. The banks have slowed down. I've spoken to Vincent Tese. We propose this year bringing together from public and private sources a billion dollar Excelsior Capital Investment Initiative. It will provide capital to help stimulate growth in small and medium sized firms, which are our most plentiful source of new jobs but are being shut out by the credit market now. They need to grow, we'll give them the capital to do it, a billion dollars worth.

We take for granted our strength with the Centers for Advanced Technology. We shouldn't. That's the future. The Centers for Advanced Technology we'll continue to invest in those cats to encourage even greater development in commercial application of emerging technologies so that New York companies and workers will have the technological ammunition to compete and to win against anyone in this country or anywhere else. And we can do that from New York. 

See it's not so bad that the federal government doesn't send us new money. You know, you know that the federal government has done to highway trust funds what it did to the Social Security funds. Right? We're all agreed on that. Forget about what party it is. They took the Social Security money and they put it in the hole in the regular deficit. They cut income taxes, especially on the wealthiest people, cheered themselves for doing it, then took Social Security taxes on the working people, the regressive taxes, took that to fill the hole created by the income tax cut. OK. We we lost that argument. They won't even listen to Pat Moynihan. I don't know why, he makes a very solid, logical case, but they did worse than that. They took the highway trust funds that were supposed to be for us. They took that money to fill up the deficit, which is getting bigger and bigger. Incidentally, the federal deficit is now as of yesterday, fifty billion dollars worse as a result of the recession,they said didn't exist. Yesterday, they admitted that the federal budget is off another 50 billion dollars. You'll recall they put together that magic budget telling you that was going to save 35 billion dollars on the deficit. Now, just from the recession, they are 50 billion dollars behind. That doesn't count Saudi Arabia. 

We will have to do something else about economic growth. One other piece. A number of other pieces, but one that's very important is our Rebuild New York program. Those highway monies that they have ripped off, they're not coming to us, we had to make up for with two giant bond issues, as you know. We were lucky to get them passed. They've worked very well. They run out at the end of 1992. We will talk to you this year about creating some kind of dedicated fund and putting together a stream of revenues for that dedicated fund for roads and bridges and perhaps for mass transportation. We put 10 billion dollars into infrastructure. We have to find ways to continue those investments. 

And while we will not wait for the federal government to develop a national energy policy that liberates the nation from its addiction to foreign oil, that does not mean we will be without one. We will go forward with our own energy plan adopted last year to develop greater energy efficiency and to explore new ways to use our natural resources, including, particularly, natural gas and hydropower. New York can lead the nation in making a declaration of independence from foreign oil. President Ford, thank you. We should do it. And we can do. 

And of course, we'll continue our emphasis on one of the proudest parts of our agenda, the Decade of the Child to help our children and their parents live fuller and more productive lives. 

We'll also move swiftly to catch the tide of opportunity presented by the globalization of the world economy. We need to find better words than globalization and prioritize. They tend to jade these exciting ideas. Let me be more specific about globalizing the economy and what it means to us. Think of it this way, the last decade I think of as the era of the Pacific, Japan, Taiwan, the perimeter nations did extremely well, suddenly appeared to blossom and the whole west coast of the country with them. And we hope they continue to thrive. But now there is a new reality. New York is already benefiting from the free trade agreement with Canada. For those of you from the or from the western part of the state, the northern part of the state, you know that we're doing very, very well up there. 

And next year in nineteen ninety two, you will have the European Economic Community, the largest market in world history, the largest coming together of people in a concerted economic force in world history, much larger than we, a huge market. Some people are intimidated by it, but there is another way to look at it. It is a market for us. It is an opportunity for us. And who is better situated to take advantage of this dynamic new economic opportunity than we? We should make the next 10 years the era of the Atlantic and we should be the first to profit from it. It really is not complicated. Our global New York program can do it for us by identifying markets overseas and helping New York firms to profit from them and to create new jobs and strengths and opportunities for our citizens. It really is not complicated. I'll give you three companies that we've done it with, OK? That most of you will recognize, at least one of them. Clestra Clean Room Technology in Syracuse, Spectrum Communications and Electronics out on Long Island, Photographic Sciences Corporation in East Rochester. You know what it comes down to? You have a tremendous amount of export work done from this state already. Only 50 companies do 90 percent of our exports. Only 50 companies in the whole state do 90 percent of our exports. You try it, you go back to your constituents, you find moderate sized businesses there who make things that could be used in France. You go to the west, the southern tier of this state, and you have a great helicopter manufacturer. OK. Schweitzer makes helicopters. What do you think they sell most of them,Saudi Arabia, Africa, Europe? There's a market for helicopters, especially the smaller ones. You go to Tulip up in Niagara. They make recyclable products for recycling. You can use those all over Europe. And you know what happens? You say to the moderate or small business firm, did it ever occur to you that you can export? And they say, well, you know, first of all, we have to find out about the markets. We'd have to send people over there. We can't afford it. And there's language and there's tariffs and there's federal regulations. And then we can step in, government, good, positive, affirmative, intelligent government saying we'll do that for you. That's what the Department of Economic Development is for. We'll go over to Europe. We'll go over the European Economic Community. We will put on a computer where you can sell your goods. We will come and show you, we'll act as consultants to you. We'll show you how to do it. We'll put you together with your opportunity. It is so simple, so eminently achievable that frankly, it's a little bit embarrassing that we didn't do more of it and didn't do it sooner. Well, now is the moment. We need opportunities to raise new wealth, the global economy is shouting at you. Here it is. And if we don't respond, somebody will respond before we do. There is a great hope for our future right there in Europe, and we're tied to them already. We have natural ties, blood ties, historic ties. Our people, large numbers of them are tied through families to Europe. It's a natural alliance, we ought to make the most of it. 

A general category of things, in this time of diminished resources you look again at some of your ancient strengths. And one intelligent approach that we have taken for a long time in this state deserves renewed emphasis. Instead of encouraging dependance on government through handouts and handouts can have a kind of numbing narcotic effect on people, they really can. They can suffocate individual initiative if they're not done properly. But instead of doing just handouts, New York has always championed the idea that we ought to help people to help themselves. And this idea, it was called empowerment about 20 years ago, has worked so well for so long that it's now winning converts from people outside the state. Roy, did you notice people outside the state whose own agendas are undernourished and they are now saying, well, that there's a good idea? Empowerment, they think of wonderful new names for it, like new paranickel, a new paradigm or something like that. But anyway, it's an old New York idea, our belief, for example, that work is better than welfare, laid the groundwork for national welfare reform. Initiatives in New York, like the Child Assistance Program CAP, first in the Nation. America Works, did you read about America Works? Did you know that we hire private people, entrepreneurs who come and take our welfare cases. Women who are looking for work, we'll take them for four months, we'll arrange daycare for their children. We'll get them into a work situation. And then after four months, when you know it's a success, only then do we pay these entrepreneurs from the private sector. We've spent something like four and a half million dollars, saved something like four and a half million dollars, and there's no telling how much we can save. That's called empowerment and it works well. That's what Liberty Scholarships is. That's what Kiosks is. And all of those programs we should emphasize and we will in the months and years ahead. All of these efforts and all of the other things that we do to give people capacity, ability to help themselves and to help the whole community, you'll see that they they receive strong treatment in our approach in the message that you were given this morning.

Now there are especially rich opportunities for change and improvement in the vital areas of elementary and secondary education. We have already invested an immense amount of wealth in education. Nobody in this state can say that we didn't give enough money to education, let's be honest. No matter who you are, where you come from, whether you're a suburb, a poor district, the poor districts have a right to complain because they were not dealt with fairly and we all know it. Whatever the political necessities were that make it that way, that's what's happened. The poor people have not received a fair share. But overall, we have two, three times the inflation rate. That has been the increase we've given education, OK. We've done it. But now we're not going to be able to afford to give that kind or maybe not afford to give any growth education. I don't know where you're going to find the money. Having invested all of that money, isn't it time now to make more of the investment? Let's see if the money is being spent properly. Let's talk about things like goals. The president is absolutely right about that. He called us all together, all the governors, and we all agreed, Democrats and Republicans from all across the country that, yes, we have to be more precise about our goals, more precise about our standards, more precise about how you measure them. How do you know when a kid is done well in history? The old days you gave him some text books, five books. You tested him on three books. It's obsolete, archaic intelligence we've brought to bear in some of our schools on assessment. We have to do goals better, standards better, assessment better, teachers and parents must have more to say about how schools have run. We have to look at choice more clearly. We have already made good use of choice in this state with magnet schools, choice in the public school context. Once you get over into private school, you know, you talk about choice in private school and vouchers, you're in a different game altogether. What you're talking about there is privatizing public school, I'm against that. I'm against privatizing public school. But within but within the public schools, within the public school area, let's look at choice more intelligently. Let's give more emphasis to competitiveness in the public school system, to the right of parents to influence the school to which their child can go. And as you know, Commissioner Sobol and the Board of Regents are doing the learning compact and they're concentrating on choice, and they'll be reporting to us soon. I think we should all be eager to read that report with an open mind and to address the subject of choice, honestly. 

And in a world where our competitiors, ironic, isn't it, though? For forty-five years we were dominant. Let's face it, we snapped our fingers, we said what the interest rates were going to be. We bought, we sold, we did everything we wanted to. And then we looked up in the countries that we brought back to life after the Second World War, Japan and Germany had suddenly gotten so powerful economically that they started snapping their fingerss, try to get them to bring their interest rates down. Now they're sucking money from all over the universe with their high interest rates because they're in trouble. You try calling them up and saying, gee, we brought you back to life after the Second World War. Give us a break. We're we're in trouble, too. It's not working. OK, so in this world where our competitors have gotten stronger than we are at things like education, you'd better do something about it. You know, Korea, Japan, they go to school for 240 days. Two hundred and forty three days. Two hundred and fifteen days. How many days we go to school? 180 days. I made the mistake of going up to the north country. Never go to the north country without Ron Stafford. See, I usually I go with Ron. I'm pretty good. You know, nobody throws fruit. They're afraid they'll hit Ron. But I went up there and I talked about, just a little bitty talk in a little bitty place, I said maybe we should go more than 180 days. And I got letters from women. I got a phone call from a woman, "You want to make my child a psychic basket case? He's already got too much education." I said, "Good lady, your kid doesn't have to go to school" you know.. But we we really have to, we really have to do something about that. I think we should ask the regents this year, you can't afford it right now. You can't afford to go to one hundred ninety days or 200 days because you have to pay teachers. And it's gonna be a complicated thing, but you can afford to study to figure out how to get there. And the people who are concentrating on education, I hope in both houses, will take a look at that with us. Now, this all part of the new thinking that we need to do about changing the nature of our workforce. We must understand who our workers are going to be and how to equip them with the knowledge and the expertize and the motivation they need. 

One other issue there I ask you to look at, a lot of the new workforce are parents. It wasn't like that in our day, or at least in my day. But it is now. Most of the people who are working have other involvements. A lot of working parents. What we're doing now is forcing them to choose. If a woman has a child and they need help at home for that newborn child and she also needs to work, we force her to make that choice between her newborn child or the job she may need desperately. A man who's working and needs the job, he's not working because some psychiatrist told him it's a convenient way to fill the interval between birth and eternity. You know, he's working because he has to work, you know, and he has an elderly parent and there's no one else to take care of her. He has to choose between the parent who's sick for a short period of time. We should have a family leave bill, family leave legislation, that commits the state to the principle that workers are not required to choose between the children they love and the job they need. They didn't do it at the federal level. We should do it here. so I will offer you a family leave bill as part of the decade of the child agenda this year. 

Now, there's another reality among us and I, I've grown weary of talking about this one. I'm sure you have to and I'm sure you have to talk about it, because everybody in every area in this state wants to know about it. But now we have to talk about it again because of something that's just been done from Washington. There's nothing more threatening to our workforce. Recession is bad, but there's nothing more threatening to our workforce, to our people, to our souls, to our future than the plague of drug abuse. Now, this horrible menace against which the president declared war only a year and a half ago is apparently too tough for Washington to fight. And so instead of fighting it, they have chosen simply to declare victory. Of all the outrageous things I have heard in my time from Washington, the worst was when they stood up and announced we're winning the war against drugs. They said that even as drugs ravage our youth, destroy much of our future, make us one of the most violent societies in the world. You think you are winning the drug war? Don't look at any statistics. Come with me. Come with me and Mayor Dinkins. I'll show you the the AIDS babies coming out of drug abuse. You want to see a baby this big? Would you believe a baby that big, shaking with addiction? Three or four nurses trying to keep it alive, in a hospital in New York City. You're going to tell me that the horrors of drug, we're managing it. Boy, the numbers are great. There are more and more AIDS babies, we don't have beds and nurses and equipment for them. You want to talk to me about drug abuse? You want to come with me to the prisons? Ask Tom Coughlin about drug abuse. Who do you think is jamming those prisons so that we don't have the money to build the cells? You want to talk to me about drug abuse? Ask the district attorneys, not the United States attorneys, because they don't do it. Ask the district attorney. Ask the sheriffs. Ask the people who run the jails, the people who run the prisons. Ask the cops on the street anywhere. You show me a county in this state that you represent where some sheriff will step forward and say the governor's full of baloney. It's great here. It's getting better. Crack is disappearing, they're not doing it anymore. None of that stuff. We don't have those people going crazy with these wild inventions. No, sir. None of that exquisite, exotic violence. 

It's worse than it's ever been in my old neighborhood, one hundred and third precinct in South Jamaica. Don't believe me ask Al Walden. Ask Barbara Clarke. Go back and ask the cops, that's the best of all. See, what happens is politically, what you want to do is dismiss it because you can't handle it. That's why they don't use the R word for hostages for recession. They didn't use the H word for hostages. They didn't use the T word for taxes. It's a whole approach. Just pretend it didn't happen. We'll declare we won the drug war. Leave it to the states to handle. All right. I'm aggravated. Tired. Sorry. I have to argue it again, you know, because what difference will it make? You're not going to change their minds. Charlie Rangel will stand up in Congress, make a great speech. He's the only one I know who regularly makes the point. He's right every time he makes it. And nothing good happens. And that's with Democrats running both houses. 

So we have to do more for ourselves. Number one, you have to renew your commitment to this. Don't let them fool you. And don't let us make the mistake that Washington is making. And don't let us fail of courage and responsibility the way they are failing. I know it's tough. I know it's expensive. I know we're not even sure how many we can bring back with treatment. We don't know how successful treatment will be. We know it's very expensive, but we don't know how successful it can be. With all of that a given, we can not turn our back on this plague. It will destroy you. It will destroy you. These are your children. And if you don't think of them that way, this is your work force. And whatever Washington tells you about it's not a problem. 

And even if it's not a problem in your district, it's a problem in this state and a very, very big one. And we can't forget it. Some things we have to do. On treatment, for example, let's look again at the people we're putting in the jails. And let's be courageous about this. A lot of them are drug addicted, non violent. Now, the violent people you have to put behind bars. We understand that. But if they are nonviolent and they are behind bars, drug addicted because they committed another drug crime, and what you're going to do is spend one hundred ten thousand, one hundred fifteen thousand dollars to build that cell, thirty thousand dollars or so to maintain it for a year for two, four, three, four for whatever it is. And they come out still addicted, you may just as well stand by the door. Because they'll come out addicted,they'll go back into the community, an they'll come back in no time at all. You know that. 

So what should you do? We should be more intelligent about it. Punishment? Yes. There's no better criminal justice system in the country in terms of punishment. Tom Coughlin runs a very good system. We all know that we have to find ways to avoid a situation where we're forced to spend and waste millions of dollars on jail cells for people who would be better off in treatment. You can't break that cycle unless you break the addiction. I would rather see them in some kind of treatment program still under the threat of penalty of going back into the jail. And I'm going to make some suggestions to you. What we have to do is remember that I'm talking about nonviolence and explain it to the people. If you explain it to the people, they will be with us on this and we can save a lot of money and do something real about addiction. 

Well, there's some other things in criminal justice we'll be doing a new Department of Criminal Justice. We'll be talking to you about the antiviolence package. Another tough subject. Please don't get annoyed at me. Assault weapons. You're wrong about assault weapons. Wait a minute. Now, wait. You're wrong. You're wrong. We're all wrong. You can not make a case for assault weapons. Just killed another kid. Assault weapons are designed to kill the largest number of people in the shortest period of time, period. They are killing machines. That's why they were made. What reason do you give for not passing the legislation that bans them? You got postcards? Somebody told you they'll be angry at you? Somebody said they'll vote against you? Do you really think this state is stupid enough and callous enough to vote against you, vote you out of office because you banned assault weapons? It is a disgrace that this civilized state still allows assault weapons. I'll send you a bill unless you send me one first. 

At the same time, we know traditional law enforcement, as I said earlier, is not the whole answer. We have to look with greater emphasis, at treatment of drug drug addicts, etc.. Punishment is important, but you can reach the point where you can't afford all the jail cells. Let's be honest.You know how we built the jail cells we have, right? A lot of purists criticize me for it. The controller, more than a purist, comptroller, is very good guy. He's in charge of the books and I don't want any unnecessary trouble. But the controller was never happy with the way we built the prison cells. You know how we built the prison cells. We had a prison bond issue and we built them anyway. How? Well, we have lawyers. Lawyers read the book Urban Development Corporation. That's legal. You mean they intended the Urban Development Corporation to build prisons? That's not the question. The question is, is it legal? It was legal. And that's how we built prison cells. And it is legal. And it was necessary. And I think it was a good judgment and I made it. But you can't keep doing that. Where are you going to get the money for all the prison cells? And what I'm saying is, let's be honest about it. 

You cannot afford to build all the prison cells under the laws as you now have them. And so you had better take another look at the laws. And what I'm saying to you is, if we do it all together and if we do it intelligently, if we do it honestly, it will not be a big lift politically. I honestly believe that. 

Now neither a sound economy nor a decent quality of life is possible without a safe, clean environment. Let me give you this one swiftly, cause I'mover time. The bond issue lost. I'll take the responsibility. It was my initiative. OK. I wish it hadn't. Is that for me taking the responsibility Faso? Faso, can I tell you something Faso? I look forward to the day. I can applaud you for taking responsibility for anything. You take this too seriously, it's John Faso, Mario Cuomo. We're all in the same club. That's the way we talk to one. 

No, I will take the responsibility. We didn't make the case to the people properly. They didn't like it. They said so. They voted against it. So be it. And it's regrettable from my point of view that I didn't do it better because the things we needed to do with that bond issue are still very important. Solid waste, water. We need a hundred and sixty two million dollars to tie into the federal system. We have terrible, solid waste problems. We need to recycle. We all know that we don't have the wealth for the recycling. We need to do a lot of things. Pat Halpin is here, the county executive of Suffolk and the other county executives. They were looking for help from that bond issue. And that problem, and that need has not gone away. And therefore, I recommend that we do something that will meet that need and still accommodate the intelligent reservations expressed by the people. They said they didn't want to borrow. We won't borrow. They said they didn't want land taken from them. OK. We won't do that. Let us instead raise up an environmental development fund that is pay as you go. Make it pay as you go. That's what the people wanted. And if we can find a way to afford it, let's make it pay as you go where no one has to worry about having their property, you know, condemned by eminent domain, notwithstanding we told them we wouldn't do that. So it will be pay as you go. It'll be a fund. We have some suggestions for a revenue stream. It would concentrate mostly on solid waste, recycling, water, parks and things that we all pretty much agreed to last year. The items that were in dispute that brought the bond issue down, we will not have to worry about. As to land acquisition and that whole question of preserving the Adirondacks, preserving the Catskills, preserving other pristine areas. We have in place a group that reports at the end of January of this year and then again at the end of January 1992, they will address the subject of acquisition and how we deal with that. In the meantime, let us rush forward some kind of fund that will give the county executives the help they need at the local level and that will do what we need to do environmentally. The need did not disappear with a defeat. Let's do it right this time. I'll make suggestions too. 

Now, you have another terrific subject this year, reapportionment. This is a great one, because I never was involved in reapportionment before. This year I'm going to be involved in reapportionment because, you know, this is the only time it ever happened. I've been here eight years now, the tenth year. Now I sit and, I'm not going to get involved with Ralph and Mel and the maps and all of that, because I don't understand that. I'll have people doing that. But when the bill comes to me, I obviously have to read it and has to be translated and I have to understand it. So I'll be around when the bill gets to me. 

The what I like about reapportionment is it is a fundamental revisiting of the political geography of the whole state. It attracts everybody's attention to the system, to democracy, to how it works. And it does not work as well as it should. And we all know tha,t we all know that incumbents have unfair advantages. You know that, now this year the Republicans made fun of me because I had a lot of money. You know, there was a lot of. Yeah, that's right. Gives you a terrible, terrible advantage to be an incumbent with a lot of money. I can tell you, it bothered me. I felt very guilty. It was, it was awful. And I know the Senate did, hurt Ralph Marino. Ralph and I used to commiserate. Ralph said, you know, I'm spending all that money. Poor Fred, he's got nothing. This isn't right. I said, yeah. 

But it's not right and we all know it, you should have a campaign finance system. You know that this system is no good. They can't beat incumbents. How are you going to beat an incumbent? We have news letters. We go on television, we go on radio. It's not right. And you know it's not right. We get away with it because we all agree. Let's change it. Why is it so hard for people to vote? Why is it that a woman in the north country, if it snows in her county, may not be able to vote? Why can't more people vote by absentee ballot? Why don't you make it easier? Why do you have those complicated statutes that say if you don't do your petition exactly right, Fabian Palomino kicks you out. Why do you have that? It's so that Fabian can kick you out if I don't want you in. That's what it's for. We have to change that. This is it. Look, this is a wonderful year for raw truth. We don't have any money. We don't have any other options. Let's shock everybody. Let's tell everybody the whole truth. All right.

In the months ahead, we're going to consider all these proposals and I'm looking forward to it. There, some of them are going to be very, very exciting. And the book has, I think, a lot of things in it that will please you. We don't have money, obviously, to spend, but the anti-smoking legislation that deals with young children, I think is something you're going to be interested in, the Agricultural Protection Act. The programs we have for seniors, the very strong agenda for people with AIDS. That's a very, very important subject. Last year they came here and somebody stood up to attract attention and some people got aggravated at them, etc. and then they did it again, when I was elected, you know, on the election night. And let me tell you, a lot of people got aggravated. I did not. I understand their feeling. And we all must understand their feeling. This is a terrible, terrible thing that is happening. And it is way, way beyond where it was a few years ago. It is through the whole community now, AIDS babies, that little trembling baby is an AIDS person. That's a person with AIDS. You'll see in the book that we are generous, very generous with our AIDS agenda. And I think if it stays that way, it's something we can all be proud of. 

Now, I look forward to working with you on the entire agenda. And that, in brief, is my report to you on the state of the state as required by the New York state constitution. Now, the Constitution does not mandate that I talk to you about my hopes, but it is impossible for me whose first appearance before you defied the laws of probability and came at another moment of fiscal emergency, although not as bad as this one, to avoid spending just a couple of minutes and talking to you about my hopes and sharing them with you. So please just permit me this final personal word. In my first inaugural, I tried to point out how personally I learned how beautiful the state was, what a miracle of a place it was. And some of you will recall I talked about Momma and Poppa and being a child in the grocery store and all of that, the public school grounds, the neighborhood sandlots, college, law school and getting into politics. And that was my story. Kind of typical story, I thought, because each of you has his or her own unique memories that teach you probably how great the state of us as this state is. Whatever those different memories, all of us I know, whatever our backgrounds, whatever region of the state we're from, whether our ancestors came here first class, steerage or dragged in chains, have one thing in common. We are New Yorkers. We are fastened to this place by memory, by obligation, by choice, by affection, by pride. Now, outsiders don't always understand that, but we do. We know because we lived it and because we are living it, that no place anywhere at any time in history has provided to more people, more possibility, more opportunity, more hope than this great state. That is the truth. And still, people come for that reason. Still, they come the eager, bright eyed seekers after opportunity from the east, from Latin America, from Europe every day, adding to our richness, burnishing our bright and beautiful mosaic. 

Now, we must keep that thought, I think, in the front of our mind as we face this new challenge. We must recall all that our forebears did to earn that opportunity. Their work, their sweat, their struggle, recall all that they had to overcome. It's not just poetry, it's history. Remember the poverty, the ignorance, the discrimination. They all took their turns at being discriminated against, the humiliation some of them felt. Recall it. Remember what they taught us about we're at our best, when we each of us commit to something larger than ourselves, that we are at our best when we think of ourselves as, yes, a family. Remember it. Remember that sharing benefits and burdens for the good of all of us is the most intelligent way for us to meet this challenge. 

And we should remember all that this state has survived, fires and floods and wars and recessions and even the Great Depression in order that we could reach the good life that most of us, certainly you and I, enjoy. Now that magnificent history places, I believe, upon each one of us whom New Yorkers have just elected or reelected an awesome burden, a burden not to be daunted by this very, very serious challenge, not to cringe at it, not to pretend it's not real, not to run away from it. Burden to meet it, to make the cuts, to find the revenue, to take the heat for telling the truth and still to build. And I hope we're able to do it.

I hope, ladies and gentlemen, we can show the world again how intelligent, how smart, how good New Yorkers can be. That is my hope. And yes, more than that, that is my belief. That we can make hope a waking dream in New York, for New Yorkers and for everyone in this nation that needs encouragement. And we'll do it together. Thank you for listening. God bless you.

Announcer: Governor Mario Cuomo is annual message to the legislature, the state of the state address has come to you through the facilities of the New York Network and SUNY SAT television services of the State University of New York. 

Read the 1991 Message to the Legislature here.