Gov. Andrew Cuomo is expected to lay out a largely progressive agenda for the annual State of the State address in Albany on Wednesday — one that tackles issues such as income inequality,poverty, and incarcerated youth.
The governor is also expected to detail a simmering plan for dealing with homelessness, and mostly in New York City,where the state’s vagrancy numbers are tall and increasingly noticeable to the public.
The governor will incorporate his budget proposal in the address.
Cuomo’s plan, while largely left leaning, and does not neglect his conservative constituents — an audience he has been planned approximately wooing since losing votes upstate in his first gubernatorial race. This year,his plan includes tax relief for small business, and investing in airports upstate.
His homelessness plan is expected to draw as much attention to his relationship with New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio as it will to the issue of homelessness itself. The two leaders have been feuding publicly for months. How, and whether,the governor addresses de Blasio in his presentation could set the tone for the upcoming legislative session — one in which de Blasio is relying on the Senate and Assembly for a variety of requests, including whether he will get to maintain control over the citys public schools.
Cuomo enters the new legislative session a limited lighter. On Monday, or U. S. Attorney Preet Bharara announced there was no proof the Cuomo administration committed a crime in its abrupt shutdown of a commission that was investigating corruption in state government.
Bharara final month won convictions of the two former leaders of the Senate and Assembly. Both men — former Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos and former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver — had shared the stage with Cuomo in the 2015 State of the State address.
The governor had affectionately referred to the three of them as the three amigos.
Source: wnyc.org