The New Year’s ball has been dropped and the governor has delivered his State of the State Address, which means that it is time for the 2010 Legislative Session to begin. The New Year brings the Legislature and governor the opportunity to turn state government around by increasing transparency, lowering taxes, instituting ethics reform, cutting spending and distributing state funds equally to all areas of the state. I have many goals that I would like to accomplish in 2010 and I wish to share them with you.
First and foremost, New York needs to institute fiscal reform. The policy of “buy more, pay later” is not acceptable. In 2010, a state spending cap needs to be put in place to control out-of-control spending. We also need to consolidate state agencies in order to save valuable tax dollars, and finally enact a comprehensive economic development plan that creates jobs where they’re needed most, the private sector. With almost 1,000,000 New Yorkers out of work, we need to make job creation a top priority this year.
In order to recover from the fiscal crisis we currently face, the 2010-11 State Budget must not contain any new taxes, fees or surcharges. Last year’s budget contained $8.2 billion in new taxes and the result was a disaster in which New Yorkers endured more taxes, and yet the state was still unable to pay its bills for the month of December. Our state government has asked its residents to bear enough of the financial responsibility, and it’s now time for the state to show some fiscal restraint and stop raising taxes to bail out the state’s diminishing coffers.
I am encouraged that the governor shares with me some of the above goals for this year. I was pleased to see that during his State of the State Address, the governor finally called for a state spending cap, a cap that my colleagues and I in the Assembly Minority Conference have been championing for years. Also, I am interested to see what the governor plans to do with the Erie Canal Research and Development Corridor. I hope that the governor will follow through with what he said during his speech, and I will continue to work with him and my legislative colleagues to enact non-partisan fiscal and governmental reforms to fix our economy and create much-needed jobs for all New Yorkers. As always, if you have any questions or concerns on this or any other state issue, please don’t hesitate to contact me at either my Johnstown office at (518) 762-6486, or my Herkimer office at (315) 866-1632.