Word: cuomo
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Cuomo had the good fortune to campaign during a recession and govern during a recovery. He inherited a projected deficit of $1.8 billion, which he eliminated in his first budget. New revenues allowed Cuomo to do what few Democratic Governors of New York have ever done: cut taxes. Cuomo boasts of having made the largest tax reduction in New York history, $3.2 billion over three years. He has overseen four straight balanced budgets and, despite the cranky, byzantine ways of Albany, they have been done on time...
...what Cuomo calls "my defense budget"--money appropriated for law- and-order--he has built more than 6,000 new prison cells for the overcrowded New York system. He has proposed a Medicaid bill that reforms the method of payment, saving the state money. New York has begun an innovative program to provide capital construction money to nonprofit groups to build housing for the homeless. It has also pioneered a variation on "workfare" programs, permitting welfare recipients to receive job training...
...Governor, Cuomo is, in a way, handicapped by his own eloquence; his vaulting rhetoric creates equally lofty expectations. In reality, he is something of an incrementalist, creating a pattern of change in small ways. "Stone by stone, we cross the morass," he likes to say, quoting Justice Learned Hand...
...Cuomo's critics suggest that he has not translated his popularity into programs, that he has failed to get the legislature to pass many of his initiatives. Says one Democratic official: "He never pushes the legislative leaders." The Governor, for example, has not been able to win support for a program to clean up toxic-waste sites around the state. Cuomo's detractors point out that the tax cut only lowers the maximum rate for personal income from 10% to 9%, and that New York still taxes and borrows more than any other large industrial state...
...average, each of Cuomo's four budgets has grown by double the inflation rate; his 1986 budget is 30% higher than his 1983 budget. The number of employees on the state payroll has increased by more than 24,000 during his administration. Notes William Stern, former head of the state's Urban Development Corporation: "Mario believes in government activism. That means spending rather than cutting." Jack Kemp has dubbed the Governor "Status Cuomo." Cuomo, says one official who left the administration, "never tackles real change...