1994 New York State of the State Address

Lt. Governor Stan Lundine: All right. Pursuant to a resolution duly adopted in each of the houses of this legislature, the Senate and the Assembly of the state of New York are met in joint session for the purpose of receiving the annual message to the legislature from the governor of the state of New York. It is indeed my pleasure to present to you at this time the governor of our state, Governor Mario Cuomo. 

Governor Mario M. Cuomo: Now, among the other items on my agenda, I'll insist that we place sharp new limits on the granting of parole. And I'll ask once again that we pass a bill that condemns unequivocally another category of detestable crimes. Those motivated by bias and hate because of race or religion or gender or color or age or disability or sexual orientation. It's time to put an end to bias related violence. Let's pass the bill. 

Now, you and I have passed tough laws before, but the truth is, and everyone has come to know that too many of them have become empty threats that fail to deter criminals because we have not enabled our police and the rest of the criminal justice system to enforce those laws effectively. Here are two things that will help. There are many we must do, but here are just two I'd like to focus on. I proposed for New York City, and other urban areas, a program I called Grip the Gun Retrieval and Interdiction Program. GRIP will provide special squads of police and prosecutors whose sole focus will be getting illegal guns and dealers off the streets and putting the cases through special court parts on a fast track basis. For troubled neighborhoods upstate, and remember 1983, crack the beginning of the terrible drug period. It didn't strike upstate. It struck mostly in New York City. It has moved upstate. It is a problem upstate and for troubled neighborhoods upstate from Albany to Buffalo, my budget will include funds to begin another new initiative that I call Operation Firebreak. Operation Firebreak will make available a team of at least one hundred state troopers to wipe out growing dens of drugs and guns and violence upstate. It will represent the same kind of concentrated police action that shattered a drug ring in Schenectady so dramatically last November. Now we'll have it all over the upstate. 

There's a long, there's a long and agenda, as you know, I've invited you to consider and act on my entire legislative agenda on guns in a special session on January 17th. That's the day we set aside annually to honor an extraordinary American leader who is lost to us by criminal gun fire, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Junior. The truth is, as things have developed, we should get started even before the 17th. There is not a person in this room that will not admit that this is our first priority, dealing with the violence. Let's start debating and passing bills, next Monday, you'll all be here and working. Why not start debating and passing the bills on that agenda next Monday and to speed that agenda I have asked the leaders to meet with me after this session this afternoon. 

We need all these strong new measures, strongly applied. We can't permit any longer the awful irresponsibility and irrationality that we're victimized by at this moment. But the recent summit held by the African-American leaders of the state indicate that some of the most disadvantaged children in our society deal with another truth, and it's this, that after you make all the tough laws and enforce them, we need to do much more. Much more than simply to apprehend and imprison violent criminals. If we condemn our children to dirty streets filled with degradation and violence, if they have no good reason to believe that they can earn for themselves, with their own honest efforts, a full and rich life, as you did and I did, aren't we then inviting disaster? The children in our troubled neighborhoods especially need a great deal from us. Perhaps most of all, they need the feeling that they are not despised. The feeling, if this is not too much for our frightened hearts, the feeling that they are loved and that they are important to all of us. They need streets without drug dealers, schools that excite their interest in some promising work or career. They need a real sense that they can dream and aspire as you did. And I did. And if they study hard enough, they need to believe that they can get a good job and succeed. As you have, and I have, they need at least what was given to us. 

That is what the decade of the child must do. We need to encourage the kind of healthy, vibrant neighborhoods where young people can find better alternatives than fighting gang wars and dealing drugs. Our neighborhood based alliance program already serves many of those communities where drugs and crime and poverty strike the hardest. This year we will expand the services they offer, will open community schools in every one of those locations, add special initiatives to combat youth violence in order to help us detect and then prevent problems like lead poisoning and child abuse. We'll open more in-school health centers to give young girls better avenues to dignity than having a baby while they're still too young. And they are seeking dignity, most of them, it's not because they don't understand contraceptives, that they have children. It's because they wish to affirm themselves and they can't find a better way than to give life. We need to find a way to show them there are other alternatives at that stage of their life. And so we will expand what has been our very successful adolescent pregnancy prevention program, which I call Other Avenues to Dignity. 

No doubt it's a high time in American. And it's a hard time in New York. And surely there is you'll agree, no simple solution. But I think the truth is that one thing comes closer to being a panacea, and there is no panacea, than any other. Most of all, what our children will need and what many of their parents need right now is the chance to work, to earn their own dignity and their own fulfillment with a job. Providing those jobs has been and must remain our continuing focus. 

Remember, a powerful job producing economy made New York State, the Empire State and the nation's most exciting generator of opportunity for seekers from all over the world. They came here, for one thing, the chance to work, not for a handout, not for shelter. They came here for the chance to work and they found it. Now we want to regain that position. And we're doing it. We're doing it. We're moving to regain the position of Empire State, and we're doing it not reactively, not sporadically, but with a specific strategy and a specific plan. Now, the premise of that plan is that our economy should be built on New York's ability to make the highest quality goods and services and sell them to the rest of the world. And here are the elements we need to achieve that predicate. We need high tech capacity in fiber optics, in telecommunications, in all of the targeted technologies, in biomedicine, in biogenetics, in robotics, in optics and imaging, in advanced materials and computers, all the targeted high tech areas. We need superior higher education and skills training. We need markets. That's what the global economy program is all about. And we need the stimulus of road, bridge and building development that both constructs the physical foundation for our future economic development and at the same time produces hundreds of thousands of jobs immediately. There's one other element that the plan requires, perhaps the most vital of all. And that is the same basic values that made our parents and grandparents the world's greatest makers and builders, a fiery, hot ambition, a respect for hard work and making it on the merits, your merits. A sense of responsibility to one's parents. The people who brought you into this world and a sense of responsibility for the children you bring into this world. A belief, most of all, in something larger than yourself. Our community, our country. Now, those are the elements that made us the greatest place in the world. Think of it after the Second World War. How did you build your economy? High tech from the Second World War, G.I. Bill of Rights that gave higher education, Eisenhower's interstate highway system that stimulated the economy. Markets overseas. You brought Japan back to life. You brought Western Europe back to life with a Marshall Plan. Not just because you love them, but because you needed them as markets. And you had the immigrants working, the sons and daughters of the immigrants, the same people who won the war for you. You put it all together and you became great. Not a whole lot has changed since then. And we have all of those elements available to us. And all of them must operate in an environment that we create, you and I,that is aggressively hospitable to the businesses, that will create the jobs and the opportunity for our people, by keeping those businesses competitive, how? You reduce their taxes. You reduce their fees. You avoid excessive regulation. 

Now, that's the plan. Who will argue with it? And it is not a vision. It is a plan that is already producing results. Oh, I know all about the recession, so do you. But look closely at the most recent economic statistics. New job growth for the first time in years. New job growth for the first time in years. Not a whole lot, but it is growth for the first time in years. Business and consumer confidence on the rise. The truth is the population watching us and hearing us finds these statements unrealistic at this time.

It has not touched their lives yet, but the evidence is clear. New business and corporations are up. So is personal income. Of course, the struggle is not over. Of course, the recession still hurts. The scars haven't healed. But we are clearly on our way back. All across the state, companies, big and small, are producing exciting new products and ideas created by our high tech capacity, with our superior workforce, with our powerful infrastructure, and selling those products and services to markets all over the world. Let me give you just a few examples. During the Midwest floods last summer, it was a product from New York's Corning Incorporated, that preserved mutant emergency communications for three states when every other telecommunications link went down. In Somalia, a new Kodak product allows Army field doctors to send medical images to the United States by satellite instantly so that they can consult with doctors here. When Michaelangelo's delicate frescoes in the Sistine Chapel were threatened by the heat and humidity caused by two million visitors a year, Carrier Corp. in Syracuse came to the rescue with a climate controlled system custom designed for the job. Made in Syracuse for Michaelangelo's Fresco's. And I could I can give you examples from Bennett X-Ray in Copiague. 

Now, in this session, we have to keep doing this, we have to amplify it. We have to amplify our message to every corner of this nation and beyond. And here's the message, New York state believes in business. We want the jobs you'll produce. We want you to do well. And if you're prepared to create jobs for our people, we'll do everything we can to make it worth your while. We need you. We want you. And to reinforce that message, I'm recommending some bold, simple measures to prove we mean it. With your help, this year, we will lighten the load of taxes, fees and regulations on New York businesses. First. First, first in a step that should produce jobs by benefiting every business in every corner of the state, I propose that we cut the business tax surcharge as we are supposed to this year. Let's cut the business tax surcharge. 

Second, to support travel and tourism, an industry that employs one of every nine New York is in the workforce, I proposed something I proposed last year. Only this year we should do it. Phase out the state hotel occupancy tax. It's killing us.

I will call on you to encourage a new surge in real estate development. You know about the Cuomo tax. I don't know how you guys and gals get away with it. We got 700 million dollars from that tax one year, and now all of a sudden it's just mine. Like, you didn't vote for it. But anyway, you know, the real estate gains tax and I don't see any of you putting out literature saying, oh, that's not fair. But anyway, you know about the Cuomo tax. I suggest that to promote a little surge in real estate development, we do this. Let's tell the developers and the builders we will lift that gains tax from them for any project, one hundred million dollar project, if you like, where you can get your shovel into the ground by the end of next year. If you start building by the end of next year, you can, we will waive the gains tax on it. 

I believe we should give small businesses a break for performing the service of collecting our sales taxes. We should reduce their costs through a sales tax vendor allowance. And I propose that we eliminate the petroleum business tax on diesel and residual fuel for farming. I knew my people from Queens would love that. We must also, we must also reduce business fees, reduce business fees, because the truth is the truth. We didn't raise the taxes, but we did pretty, pretty well with some of the fees. So we should reduce the fees and eliminate them wherever possible. I propose we cut, now this is one that bothers everybody, corporate filing fees. Let's get rid of the corporate filing fee and. And here is here is one that's even worse. I don't know where it came from, but let's get rid of it. We have to eliminate the permit and fee that you pay in order to be able to pay wages by check. If you pay by check, we nail you again. Let's be honest about it. Even for us, that was obnoxious. So let's get rid of that thing. I also urge strongly that we wipe out several onerous environmental fees and I will call for a moratorium on all new business fees, no new taxes, no new business fees. Read Ralph's lips.

We must also eliminate unfair regulatory burdens, especially on our smaller businesses. I will require all agencies in charge of substantial business regulations and EnCon's done it. But I will require departments of health, labor and taxation and finance to conduct a top to bottom review to eliminate unnecessary or outdated regulations. And I will appoint special representatives, I call them business ambassadors to serve as the voice of the business community within each of these key state agencies to make sure that government gives New York companies a fair hearing. The comprehensive improvements I'm proposing will help give New York businesses the flexibility and the strength that they need to create new jobs, which is what we're after. At the same time, we will help speed them to the future with five new centers for advanced technology at universities around the state. With the help of local executives we'll work to promote a new high technology corridor. At the heart of Long Island, supplying the capital and expertize to create a homegrown Silicon Valley on Long Island.

In Rochester, in order to encourage local startup firms we'll establish a high tech business incubator. And we'll begin planning for a Buffalo Metro Medical Ccorridor, Building on the strength of the Roswell Park Cancer Institute, where we have together just committed to invest two hundred and forty million dollars. That was an Arthur Eve Member's item. 

 We will move forward with major, major recommendations of our telecommunications exchange. We'll expand our efforts to bring the latest in agricultural technology out of the laboratory and into the hands of our farmers. Now, to help build the roads and bridges and schools and research centers that will make our state still stronger in the future, we will accelerate our new New York building program that you have already adopted. These crucial public building projects will supply, as you know, more than three hundred thousand jobs over the next few years. We want to get more of them into this period. It's a huge program. I think we all recall that President Clinton asked the Congress for 16 billion dollars as a stimulus for the whole nation's economy, 16 billion for the entire nation, but was rejected by the Congress. Thanks to your work, your good work, our new New York program provides twice tha sum, thirty-two billion dollars just for New York State. We're also building on our strength in transportation through an ambitious strategy developed through the leadership of Lieutenant Governor Stan Lundine. First will establish a high speed rail corridor between New York City and Albany. Then extend it westward, eventually to Buffalo. We will then develop the first intercity magnetic levitation train system in the world. Eventually, Maglev would mean not only swifter and safer transportation, but thousands of our thousands of jobs for our people as well. Maglev. Our economic development plan, and it's all in the book, will strengthen the entire state, no region is left out. In the end, however, the work we do to cultivate our economy adds up to nothing if we're not preparing our people to seize its challenges and reap its rewards. To give our people the best skills and the most promising industries. 

I'm proposing a major commitment to strengthening our workforce training system that needs some work. And we need to improve still further our education system, especially at the elementary and secondary levels. Now, President Pat Swygert's Moreland Commission, has already set us on the high road to real reform in education. In part, they reaffirm some of the good things done by Tom Sobol and the Board of Regents, and they add other things. We will introduce, this session, a whole new approach to the way schools are run. And I hope you will look at this very, very closely. I know the school boards like it. I've discussed it all over the state. Let's try this. Let's put education into the hands of the people who care most and know best. Let's allow individual schools that want to try it, to scrap virtually every educational mandate handed down by the state except a clear standard of high quality education, and then let the schools determine on their own how and what to teach. We will call these new institutions, these liberated institutions, 21st century schools. Let the schools at the local level do it, insist that they maintain quality. Let them do it for their children. I think it's worth a try. My budget will also increase support for our pre-K and Community Schools program and expand, and it will expand our highly successful career pathways reforms to more locations. 

We should move forward with another new idea. Different than a version of it you've heard previously. You know about Stuyvesant High School, you know about Bronx High School and you know about Brooklyn Tech. And they're all in New York City and they're the best in the world. And we win 40 percent of the Westinghouse scholarships just from those three schools. And they are the sons and daughters of the poorest people in New York City who never would have been able to realize their potential if it were not for those schools and they were free. And if you were lucky enough to be able to count better than your brother or sister and some genius saw in you the spark of genius, you would go to this school. And now they are the captains of industries, they're great scientists all over the world. But you don't have one in Buffalo and you don't have one in Long Island. And unless you do something about it, you'll never have one. Let us create these schools. Why deny the rest of the state? Let's have Excelsior High Schools, each affiliated with a Suny campus, each serving juniors and seniors with exceptional gifts in math, science and technology. And let's initiate the first of these schools this year. Otherwise, we'll have to explain why we're denying the rest of the state this good idea. 

I will also call for a special summit on education, as requested by the Moreland Commission to help put into practice other ideas for reform. One, expanded public school choice. I think we ought to expand public school choice. We have it now with magnet schools, etc. as far as you can go, not to the private schools. But we should expand public school choice. And you need a longer school year. You can't go to school for 180 days and compete with people are going 240 days. Let's have a summit and figure out how to do it.

Now, all all these initiatives to cultivate the strength of our people will help us give us the powerful economy and the jobs that that economy will produce and that our children will need. And here's a place where the rest of the nation is already following our lead. But we must stay ahead. Welfare reform. Now, we've had great success with CAP. You know that we won a hundred thousand dollar prize with it. You know that that the child assistance program received special treatment from the Bush administration because of its extraordinary capacity for real change. It's a national model for welfare reform. It declares unequivocally that work is better than welfare, that parents ought to be able to escape welfare. And we make that easier for them by allowing them to profit significantly from their work. Now, we must do for everyone on welfare what CAP is doing for single parents and their children, help them regain self-sufficiency, dignity and hope. In effect, we want to save people from the system wherever and whenever we can. 

First, I propose that we institute a new state earned income tax credit that will help nearly one point three million people who are poor but who are working to do better than be poor. Let's give them a tax credit to encourage them and assist them. Next, we must turn the welfare system inside out. Starting now, that's exactly what we will do with an initiative called Jobs First. What happens when you walk into a welfare office? Now you walk into a welfare office. What do you want? You want welfare. Terrific. Here's an application. Let's see if you get it. You fill in the spaces if you appear to qualify you're on welfare. Our jobs first philosophy philosophy says that's wrong. That's the last thing that should happen to you, is going on welfare. First, before welfare, we should help you find work. First, before welfare, we should help you get job training. First, before welfare, we should determine if a one-time cash payment might tide you over, pay the rent, let you hold on to your car until you can find another job. Jobs should come first. Not welfare. Welfare should be only a last resort. I propose that we expand our Working Toward Independence Program. You know what that is? It is a program not to punish people on home relief. It is a program that gives home relief recipients the opportunity to get work experience, which in some cases they don't have, to pay off their grants if they can't find private sector work by working for the public in some regard. Now, the theory is very simple. You come to us, you're poor, we understand that, you're out of work. We have a constitutional obligation to take care of you, and we're proud of that. There are some states, as you know, who no longer have home relief. If you are not AFDC, if you don't if you are not a woman with a child, you're out. If you're unlucky enough to be a woman without a child, but desperate, a man without a child, but desperate, you have no welfare program in some states. That won't happen here unless you change the Constitution. We wrote into our Constitution. We will take care of everybody. But we didn't say we will discourage them from working. The Working Toward Independence Program says, look, the first thing we'll do is try to find you a private sector job so you can earn money. And we hope you earn a lot so that can give us money to take care of other people whp are in trouble. But in the meantime, if you can't find a job, we want you to do some work for us. Go, you know, the bus terminal can use some work. The welfare office may be able to use some clerks. Why not? We want you ,not to be punished, we're not doing this to discipline you. As a matter of fact, there's a bit of an effort to find you those jobs. That's why more counties in the city of New York haven't done it. But we think it's good for you and it's good for all of us, to remind us that our people came here to work. Work is what makes this place go round. Work is what made us the greatest nation in the world. Work is nearly a religion in this place or should be. That's Working Toward Independence. We're going to beef that program up this year. Let's Go.

I'd also recommend that we expand our work with America Works. Do you know what America Works is? It's terrific. Here's a company called America Works. We dealt with them in nineteen eighty eight. They help us find job placements for New Yorkers on welfare. You send them the welfare client. If they like the welfare client, they say, we'll take this guy. We'll work on him. We don't pay them anything, until they get a job. And if they get a job and it's a good job, then we pay a fee and the fee is a lot less than what it would have cost us to have the person on welfare, we'll do business with America works all we can. 

What's more, when we provide financial help and technical expertize to New York companies, when we're giving the companies something, I think we should ask them for something in return. Vincent Tese gives them a break, gives them a loan, JDA, whatever it is, expertize, training, Global Economy Program. We will encourage those companies, who have asked us for something and gotten it, to hire people from our welfare rolls. And finally, finally, we will step up our effort already one of the most aggressive in the nation to combat fraud and misuse of the welfare system.

Now, these are just some of our proposals to rescue our neighborhoods from violence and put all of our people back to work. Of course, as you know better than anyone, we are working to serve the people of New York and dozens and dozens of other areas, all of which are in the book. Health care reform is extremely important. We think of ourselves as national leaders in that area and that is going to be the principal subject in Washington this year. We need to fight for a fairer share of Medicaid. I'm not going to take the time to dwell on that now because we have just about run out of time. But it's in the book. We need a civil rights bill. It's in the book. We need to do something more with our parks. It's in the book, Reinventing DMV, reforming our democracy. You'll see in the message that I've given you that no part of our mission is neglected this year. And it is, I think, a nice, specific clean action agenda. 

You know, looking back, it's clear to me that many times in the past, New Yorkers have endured uncertainty, harshness, hardship, and as a matter of fact, you and I began our work together, facing very hard times. Do you recall 1983 at the start of my first year as governor? An earlier recession had left us with what was then the largest potential deficit in the history of New York State. At the same time, inexplicably, we were struck by two terrible forces, one, a diabolical new drug called crack. All of a sudden, in 1983, crack caused madness, violence, death. We had never seen anything like. And then we were visited by the terrible tragedy of AIDS all at once these things happened and we had to fight back, you and I. We had to make very tough decisions, some of them politically unpopular. And we did it. And we did it well. By 1987 we had brought the unemployment rate to its lowest point since 1970. We had taken steps that could bring our top tax rate to its lowest level in 30 years. We had begun the most massive rebuilding New York had ever seen. And by 1989, we had created over a million jobs, a whole new, exciting state of the art network of high tech concentrations that we called Centers for Advanced Technology, we will have 13 this year, all since 1983. And we had created a whole new transportation manufacturing industry. How many people understand that? How many people remember the campaign of 1982? 

I objected to buying subway cars made outside of New York. No one else did, but I did. And I said to you and to others, I believe we can make our own right here. We have the workers, we have the yards, we have the market. They're selling to us, they're selling to the MTA, they're selling to the subways. Why shouldn't we do it? We have the best workers in America. And at that time, we had no train car makers in this state. Not one company. We had Budd in Pennsylvania. Today, we have three of the four largest United States manufacturers of subway trains. We have them in Elmira Heights. We have them in Cornell. We have them in Yonkers and a fourth, and listen to this and a fourth, Bombardier is now looking for a location in our state because they came from France and they came from Canada. And they came to see me a couple of weeks ago and they said, Governor, we'd like to be in your state. We teased a little bit about 1982 and I said we'd be delighted to have you. Then we'll have four of the largest makers in the whole world. We will have a near monopoly in the whole hemisphere on people who make subway cars. All of that since 1982.

Now, we also have, we also have the country's two largest bus manufacturers since 1982, we brought Don Sheardown from Canada. He's up there in Oriskany. And we are doing business and putting people to work, a whole new manufacturing industry with thousands of jobs, just as promised, we created it. And we can do that kind of thing over and over in this state. We did that despite two recessions and we have produced two budget surpluses in a row now and job growth has begun now. And I predict real tangible continuing job growth all through 1994.

Together, you and I. I'm not sure the people yet know, but together you know, that you and I have been building the foundation for a better New York. Now, we should commit ourselves together to finishing the job of building the future. And what do you think New york State will look like in that future, as we open the door to a new century of possibility for the Empire State? I think I know. I think New York will be a thriving economy of agile companies charging into the future, driven by evolving technologies. New York will be neighborhoods that belong to their residents again. They'll be a new generation of young New Yorkers with the wisdom to overcome racism, divisiveness and discrimination, to say how stupid it was. There will be Excelsior High schools like the great schools we now have in New York City and they will be all over the state, training gifted, young scientists and mathematicians. There will be a high speed rail system whisking passengers from New York City to Buffalo, as Buffalo is on its way to the 16th consecutive Super Bowl contest. There'll be a people mover at last, a people mover linking the airports in New York City and building will have begun on our ambitious Maglev system. There'll be a high tech corridor on Long Island that is the envy of the nation, but only the first among equals in New York state. There'll be a state government so technologically advanced that you can do most of your business with a telephone card or an A.T.M. card. There will be thousands and thousands of people for whom being on welfare is only a distant memory. And there will be, I predict, very respectfully, a sparkling new state constitution adopted after a people's convention that was voted on in nineteen ninety seven where the people said, yes, we want to do it ourselves and we want to do it better. And that new constitution will revitalize the democracy of this state. And in the next...And if there are any politicians at all in the room today, you'll be particularly interested in this...In the next presidential election, nineteen ninety-six, I guess. New York State's presidential primary will have been moved to March, we will be the strongest voice in America in deciding who will lead the country the next time around. And I hope Washington is paying attention.

Our future will have not one New Yorker who wakes up worried about the family's health insurance. And we will be breathing cleaner air and continuing to enjoy the protected lands of the Adirondacks and the Catskills still and forever wild. You know, you know, some of you better than I do, that we have everything we need to make all of this real. These are not illusions. This is hard reality. If we're up to it, we have what you need. We have the high tech capacity. There's nothing like it in the country. We have the markets. We have access to the great European market. We have have our Global Economic Program. We have the infrastructure. Who in the United States of America has a more extensive infrastructure system than ours, transportation system, the best in the world. Schools, we must make them better. But we have the most extensive higher education system and half, at least of our elementary and secondary system is among the best in America. We have a beautiful piece of the earth and we have, most importantly, the toughest, strongest, brightest, sweetest people in America right here in New York State. We have no excuse for failure. And if we work really hard, we may be able to make enough of our enormous potential so that our grandchildren will remember us with the same respect and amazement that we feel for the generations who built this great state and country the first time around.

Read the 1994 Message to the Legislature here.