The devil is in the details…and the veto proof majority in the assembly. I am trying to be optomistic, I really am.

Spitzer agenda: government reform, tax cuts
ALBANY - In his first State of the State address, Gov. Eliot Spitzer put government reform, ethics and the economy at the top of an agenda so ambitious some legislators said it would require magic to accomplish.

The Democrat outlined a broad set of changes, including campaign finance reform and lobbying restrictions, consolidation of courts, local governments and hospitals, and more charter schools and pre-kindergarten classrooms.

Moreover, Spitzer said he wants to do this while reducing the growth of state spending and implementing a $6 billion-over-three-years property tax cut.

The new governor said his record-setting election victory signaled that New Yorkers won’t be satisfied with minor changes.

“New Yorkers didn’t whisper for change on Election Day,” Spitzer said in the speech he delivered to a joint session of the Legislature at the Capitol, “they shouted for it.”

The laundry list of goals left some legislators nodding in agreement about the ideas but shaking their heads about how it would all get done.

“To do all the magic he wants to do,” said Assembly Republican Leader James Tedisco, R-Schenectady, “health care, education, all the programs, and cut property taxes? To do all that, he’d better be better than Houdini.”

Spitzer echoed a theme of his inauguration speech, delivered just two days ago, in which he vowed to end what he called the state’s Rip Van Winkle decade, a sharp criticism not only of three-term Republican Gov. George Pataki but also the longtime leaders of the state Senate (Joseph Bruno, R-Brunswick, Rensselaer County) and Assembly (Sheldon Silver, D-Manhattan). In his State of the State address, Spitzer said: “As the world has transformed and moved forward, it is only Albany that has stood still.”

The governor blamed this on a “lack of leadership” but reached out to legislators by saying: “I know this can be the start of an historic bipartisan partnership.” He said government reform was the first priority - particularly ethics and election laws.

That put a spotlight on state legislators, some said.

“I think it was an honest assessment of the Albany culture,” said state Sen. John Bonacic, R-Mount Hope, Orange County. “I personally thought he was getting in the face of the leaders of both houses.”

Bonacic has called on Bruno to step down in the wake of an FBI probe of his outside business interests. The state Senate re-elected Bruno as majority leader yesterday.

Government watchdog groups were almost beside themselves with glee.

“There hasn’t been much snow in New York this winter, but you could almost feel the ice breaking in Albany today,” said Michael Waldman, executive director of the Brennan Center, a New York University-based think tank that issued a 2004 report that said New York has the nation’s “most dysfunctional” legislature and spurred calls for reform and influenced some elections.

“There hasn’t been a State of the State speech like this one for as long as anyone can remember. Spitzer went right at the heart of the Albany establishment and laid out a truly breathtaking set of reforms,” Waldman said.

The address is generally when a governor lays out his plans for the year. During his hourlong address, Spitzer largely relied on a set of ideas he championed during his campaign:

He said the only way lawmakers can achieve his self-described ambitious agenda is through fiscal discipline - even though the state is expected to end this fiscal year on March 31 with a $1 billion surplus. Sounding somewhat like George Pataki, the Republican governor he succeeded, Spitzer said lawmakers must “end the culture of spending that is out of control.”

“The eyes of New York are on us,” Spitzer said. “All New Yorkers ask is that when we address these problems, we reject the interest-group politics of division and fear, and compromise enough to find consensus and listen enough to find solutions.”