On January 3^rd, Governor Andrew Cuomo delivered the 2018 New York State of the State Address in Albany. In this speech, the Governor made comments about the condition of New York state, the issues he regards as important for the coming year, and various policy proposals. If one would like to see the speech, it is available to view on C-Span.

In this article, I will be commenting on some of the issues and policy matters were brought up in the State of the State Address.

In regards to education, Governor Cuomo proposed working to ensure the availability of pre-k to all children, improving the supply and affordability of food for schools, and expanding college education preparation programs. These things could be helpful if advanced. The governor paid lip service to the notion of improving equal education access, though in a significant sense he has failed to make or effectively plan to achieve substantive advancement on this matter. The unfortunate fact of the matter is that there are problems in the state’s education funding, which systemically underfunds many upstate, lower income, and predominantly minority schools in the state. In addition for this, for over the decade the state failed to provide even the amount of funding they were legally supposed to pay these schools, to the tune of billions of dollars. Despite being sued and found guilty years ago, the state has not fixed the situation. Governor Cuomo has failed to take proper substantive steps to fix this matter, and so far yet to give adequate indication that he would do anything in the future to fix it. The state needs to reform its state funding system to ensure that all students are able to have access to a decent education. There also needs to be reform in curriculum and teaching practices in schools across the state, in order to better achieve educations which will cultivate knowledge, reason, character, skill, and good citizenship.

Governor Cuomo repeats his misleading claim that his Excelsior Program has made New York State the first state to make free college a reality. The Excelsior Program offers supplementary funding to some New York college students to help pay for remaining costs of tuition after other funding sources are exhausted. Some college students were already attending college with financial aid covering the cost of tuition. Though even with Excelsior and existing programs, there are still many students who have to take on debt to pay for the cost of their college education.

Here’s a counter proposal to help advance a situation where all New Yorkers can have a reasonable opportunity at a debt-free college and other post-secondary education. Increase funding for the state’s Tuition Assistance Program (TAP). Raise TAP eligibility and increase the maximum amount of funding for students to a level that would assure a reasonably sufficient amount of funding for any qualified student attending a public or private non-profit college, university, or vocational school in the state of New York. Expand eligibility for TAP funding to graduate students as it had once been. Expand funding opportunities for part-time students, so that more people who do not have the time to be full-time students can have the opportunity to get an education. Expand support for work training programs to help prepare workers with the skills and certification to be better prepared for attaining available jobs. These steps would help to move us further toward making a debt-free college education possible, and toward allowing more people to attain the benefits of post-secondary education.

Earlier this year, the state government had passed rules requiring the forced consolidation of local government services. This included forcing local governments to draw up consolidation plans, the creation of county wide consolidation boards, and threatened to revoke state aid of communities did not comply. This was promoted based on the misleading claim that this would help reduce property taxes, when in reality it would do little to actually affect property taxes, and would serve to gut local governments and their autonomy. Governor Cuomo proposes making these force consolidation efforts permanent.

This is a terrible proposal by the governor and cop out from having to actually undertake a substantive effort at reforming state finance. Property taxes in New York state are not high because of local government having their own local services. They are high because the state government forces localities to pay four 15% of the state budget, rather than pay for its own expenses, and this mandated spending forces local government to increase property taxes to cover the expense. If Governor Cuomo and the state legislature were serious about lower property taxes, they would reform the state finance system to have the state more responsibility for paying for its own expenses and stop placing as much of a burden on localities. If this was done than it would help enable localities to lower property taxes and to have more money to pay for services and projects that would benefit their communities.

The Governor Made proposals for establishing stronger laws against sexual harassment, ending state payments for settlements of sexual harassment by officials, and making sexual extortion and non-consensual pornography illegal. The state should establish stronger efforts against sexual abuse, and these proposals are welcome. Though unfortunately his proposals did not include supporting the passage of the child victims act. Though that is not surprising consider the governor’s history of ignoring and failing to back efforts to combat the sexual abuse of children. The state should pass the child victims act. The state should also abolish the statute of limitations for sex crimes.

The governor called for stronger efforts to combat the opiod crisis, including suing companies which supplied opioid products beyond their medically proper use. Indeed, stronger efforts need to be taken against the opioid crisis, and hopefully the state will take stronger efforts the opioid crises. Though there is an even larger drug crisis which the state government has not only overlooked, but helped fuel. That is the alcohol crises. Alcohol use kills more New Yorkers than opioids, and costs our state over 16 billion a year in social, medical, and economic damages. In past years figures in the state government including governor Cuomo and most members of the state legislature have used state power to encourage the growth of the alcohol industry, reduce restrictions to protect the health and safety of public, and have used state agencies and their own prestige to encourage drinking. As a result, they have worked to increase the harms caused by alcohol use, and to increase the profits of the greedy companies that have profited off harming their fellow citizens and leaving society to pay for the damages. This needs to change. We need to treat the alcohol crisis with comparable seriousness. The state needs to stop supporting the alcohol industry, restrictions against the alcohol industry need to be increased, temperance must be promoted, support for prevention efforts and addiction treatment need to increased, and the alcohol companies need to be held accountable for the damage they have done.

The governor had made proposals to encourage greater voter participation, including establishing automatic voter registration, same day registration, and allowing for early voting up to 12 days before election day. Though I would suggest adding easing ballot access requirements so that voters can have more options on the ballot, and regular citizens will have a greater opportunity to be able to run for office. It takes more signatures to get on ballot for most local positions in New York than it takes to get on ballot for congress in Tennessee. It takes fewer people for a minor party to gain state recognition in Mississippi, Vermont, Louisiana, Colorado, or Utah than it takes to use an independent nominating petition to place a candidate on ballot for New York state senate. The high petition requirements for gaining ballot access requirements makes it so that potential candidates need larger amounts of money and organized support just for voters to have them as an option on the ballot. As such, reducing ballot access requirements would make an important element of helping to increase citizen participation.

Important efforts and reforms are needed in order to improve the condition of the state of New York and to move the government toward better serving the wellbeing of the people. Achieving this will take more than the word of politicians. It will take the active effort of the citizens of this state to push the state toward enacting good policies and to undertake the effort of working to change conditions in our state.