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Whole lot of nothin’

Gov. Cuomo’s wasted year

• By BOB McMANUS
• Last Updated: 4:10 AM, June 20, 2013
• Posted: 11:24 PM, June 19, 2013

Bob McManus

Once the Executive Mansion on Eagle Street in Albany was where big ideas went to hatch.
But that hasn’t been true at least since Hugh Carey’s first term — and maybe the drought was weighing on Andrew Cuomo Monday evening, when he told a hastily convened, off-the-record dinner for reporters that he’s a man given to looking at “the Big Picture.”
As opposed to his father, Mario — who was, Andrew said, an “incrementalist” during his 12 years in residence at the Mansion.
That, at least, is true: Mario Cuomo, in fits and starts, tugged New York quite a ways down the road to decline, embracing fiscally corrosive social programs and special-interest giveaways — ultimately having to sell a prison to help pay for it all.

AP

A record starting to look a lot like dad’s: Gov. Cuomo with his father Mario last week, at the unveiling of Cuomo Sr.’s official portrait in the Capitol.

But it was a long time before anybody noticed — or much cared — because, well, because Mario talked so nice.
Andrew, famously, is less given to persuasion. He told the reporters Monday that he prefers the practice of “politics” to the pursuit of sound “policy” — an uncharacteristically revealing admission.
For sure, to every governor his own approach.
But thus far Cuomo’s politicking has amounted to high-decibel hectoring over largely invented issues, even as he allows “Big Picture” needs — endemic corruption and real economic renewal chief among them — to slip by the boards.
And this helps explain why Cuomo’s third legislative session is coming to such a fitful, essentially unproductive, end.
Let’s face it: A “Big Picture” approach to the Legislature amounts to hard-wiring a wide-screen TV to the Cartoon Channel — or maybe to “Cops.” Nothing will proceed from the arrangement save occasional hilarity — but more often, tears. And nothing has.
But neither has Cuomo brought anything substantive to the table this year.
His gun-control program and his abortion bill were hot-button straw-men. The gun bill targeted rifles, when all of five New Yorkers were murdered with rifles in 2012, while abortion is more sacrament than sin in the Empire State. The legislation was clearly designed to entice Long Island soccer moms to vote for Democratic state Senate candidates in 2014 — and that may well work.
But corruption endures.
So does upstate economic stagnation.
Indeed, Cuomo’s proposal for “tax-free” development zones tied to State University campuses focuses attention on the entire state’s chief problem — crushingly high taxes — and for that reason alone it has some merit. And it may even work. (Wasn’t there a confirmed miracle at Lake Placid in 1980?)
But as for the governor’s notion of Las Vegas-style casinos as upstate economic sparkplugs . . . well, let’s put it this way: Las Vegas-style casinos aren’t even working well in Las Vegas. Nor in Atlantic City — which is one reason why both Nevada and New Jersey are turning toward online gambling to make up for lost action.
So while brick-and-mortar casinos may rock as promissory notes on the eve of a statewide election, somebody should check with Barnes & Noble before penciling them in as a long-term proposition. Digital rules.
Meanwhile, two substantially less speculative approaches to upstate resuscitation never got off the shelf during the now-concluding session — a disgraceful triumph of politics over “Big Picture” policy that Cuomo once effectively embraced.
They are:
* Mineral extraction via hydraulic fracturing, or fracking — a vibrant industry just south of the upstate border with Pennsylvania.
Cuomo’s timorousness — he’s terrified of the green lobby — has not only denied New York the economic benefits of a practice that’s producing great wealth elsewhere, but also has reduced his health and environmental commissioners to feckless political tools.
* Mandate relief, an indispensable step in relieving local governments of the property-tax burdens that contribute so heavily to upstate stagnation.
Generally, each mandate benefits a specific special interest; taken together, they represent a barrier to reform that only a truly courageous governor could hope to breach — something that Cuomo most definitely is not.
The session seems likely to extend into the weekend, and so the potential for more mischief, as always, remains real.
But the curtain has come down as far as big ideas are concerned — not that it ever was up. Not in this administration, and not for some time before it.
It’s the Age of Incrementalism, and it’s New York’s to endure.
rmcmanus8@gmail.com