New York Now; Caption Master #46

The governor spoke about the budget the budget budget and the deficit. And the current shortfall. Andrew Cuomo begins his first full week as governor elect as the changing of the guard starts in New York City setting up a transition committee in the coming days and weeks which will primarily be a transition committee to find talent. Any organization is only as good as his talent and how do we bring the best and the brightest into state government to get people excited about big government. Also with the winter just around the corner ski resorts across the state are starting to change the way they use electricity. We'll let you know how as we head down the Innovation Trail and treasures from the Revolutionary War era make their way to the Capitol. It's all next on New York now. Funding for New York now is provided by W N E T. Additional funding provided by the LEO Cox speech Berlin foundation. This is New York now.

Hi everyone and welcome to New York now I'm Matt Ryan Casey Seiler is off this week. The handing off of the baton from Governor David Paterson to Governor elect Andrew Cuomo began this week in New York City. And that's where we start our look at this week's headlines. The formal process began Tuesday with Governor Paterson and Governor elect Cuomo making their first official appearance together. We talked at some length about transition. We talked about evaluations. We talked about issues involving the state and we talked about the mechanisms to try to alleviate the terrible recession that's hindered so many dreams and expectations over the last few years. One of the main issues on the transition is personnel. And the governor and I are going to be discussing existing personnel and he's going to be giving me recommendations will be setting up a transition committee in the coming days and weeks which will primarily be a transition committee to find talent. Any organization is

only as good as its talent and how do we bring the best and the brightest into state government to get people excited about state government. Cuomo talked about his designs for the office in the midst of such tough economic conditions across the state. There was not a lot of mystery here. No new taxes no new taxes no new taxes. You're right because I think that would be counterproductive for the state. I think you will force an increase in the number of New Yorkers who are fleeing the state for different jurisdictions because they don't want to pay the tax rate. You have no economic future if New York is the tax capital of the nation. It's that simple. So the raise taxes raise more revenues. That's not the answer. Also I think this is a moment in time where this is a recalibration and a lot of these programs need to be redesigned and revisit it anyway. So there's almost an opportunity in this crisis. And then third Where do you cut the money you're going to cut the

spending you're going to cut the funds where you spend them you spend them on health care you spend them on education you spend them on state operations and that's where you're going to have to cut you have to find the cuts that inevitably lead to the question about layoffs next year we'll see what the numbers are and we'll have conversations with the respective unions at that time and we'll make those decisions. When you talk about layoffs that's obviously those are not numbers those are families. Who who will deal with significant upheaval in their lives. But when you're talking about jobs I truly believe if you want to talk about generating jobs in this state you're going to have to talk about getting the taxes in New York under control. Speaking of budget shortfalls leaders from a group of nonprofits across the state are trying to get their message out before the cutting begins. These individuals in Albany Tuesday calling on the governor you like to work with them to preserve the core

services they say help middle class families across the state. One of the worst side effects is that it has a chilling effect on innovation. What not for profit is going to go out there and incubate a program a new idea. Break ground try something new when the state has become such an unreliable partner. It really does a disservice to the sector. I have many many friends who are in state agencies and I know that they are as frustrated as we are. I think this is a leadership issue and that's why we need to see some change. According to the controller's office there are approximately 24000 nonprofits across the state providing 17 percent of New York's workforce. One of the legislators back at the Capitol this week was former Democratic attorney general candidate Richard Brodsky. We caught up with the outgoing Assemblyman at a hearing he chaired for the corporation's authorities and commissions committee January 1st is coming pretty shortly you will not be coming back to Albany as an assemblyman.

I wonder what's going to happen to Richard Branson come January 1st you have any plans. Well I'm planning to enter journalism and get a microphone and ask you people the miserable questions we've been asking me. I'm not sure I have any plans I want to announce right now. There's a lot of good wonderful things to do out there both private and public sectors and life is good and I'm looking forward to it. If you considered it all working for Andrew Cuomo to have any desire to be in in his administration that those questions should be directed at the governor elect he has the absolute right to pick people he's comfortable with. And I don't think it does anybody any good to make suggestions or encourage or discourage anything like that. He's a smart competent competent man. He'll surround himself with people he's comfortable with. That's not a no. This is it's not a yes it's not a no it's not a maybe it's not a hint it's on a wink. It's that the governor elect should be given every encouragement to surround himself with people he's comfortable with. And finally some key documents and artifacts from the Revolutionary War era were on display at the state capitol this week. Some of the items available for

viewing included New York's copy of the U.S. Constitution. The paper's turncoat Benedict Arnold gave to a British Major detailing America's troop strength at West Point and several pieces dealing with our first president George Washington including his original farewell speech in 1796 a sword be long into the Commander in Chief. And finally a bust of the man that was cast directly from an original plaster done before his death in 1799. All right now that we got you caught up let's delve further into this week's news that our reporter roundtable Nick Reisman from the Ghanaian News Service. And Rick Karlin of the Albany Times Union All right. First up we saw the transition press conference between Governor elect and Governor each jet is David Paterson I jokingly referred to himself quote promised no new taxes and talked about where the areas where he is probably going to be cutting what are those areas. There's a lot of areas. The first thing and he's been talking about this for quite some time is consolidating state government in other words merging some of the government agencies

and merging them together which would create efficiencies this is done in business all the time and that could potentially lead to some some cuts maybe even some job cuts although he wouldn't get into the details about that yet. So I think that that may be the first order of business in terms of. Realizing savings on the state level and Cuomo has also signaled that there's not going to be any big increases in fact there may be decreases for some local aid categories that the state gives out each year to schools Medicaid that sort of thing when he was in the Times-Union editorial board he made it clear that there's going to be less money this year that would be you're not going to get more money you're going to get less money this is he's signaling this to the counties to the school boards and so forth and he just said that they're just going to have to figure out a way to live that it's really going to be the spending as he talked about earlier is going to be an education it's going to be in health care those are what they spend the most money on. Yell out of people in Albany expect the biggest cuts to come

during his first year in office so that's a windfall because he's got the he's most political capital he's got this big voter mandate. You know in defeating Carl Paladino a couple of weeks ago. So he'll likely have to push through those first difficult cuts. This budget which he is going to be doing in the first three weeks of his administration after he's sworn in as you noted the expectation is there among the electorate among the public public that OK we need cuts state government has gotten too big it's too out of control and we need to trim things back that's I think that's part of the mandate in some ways and he knows that he's going to run with that at least for the first year. And he's given fair warning he's been talking about this the editorial. Board meetings and I go into certain towns as these I crisscross the state he is given fair warning and he also has a war chest that that he said he'll spend. He expects to be attacked when he makes his first round of cuts or propose cuts he'll get. And some of the unions will run ads demonizing him right what hill then do is dip

into his his campaign account and run ads firing back at them even firing back at individual legislators who side again who lined up against him so it's going to be a new tactic. And you know one of his predecessors Eliot Spitzer is right that jack dick and it did not go very well. That that's true. The difference though being this time around is that Andrew Cuomo has the business community lined up behind him he's got the State Business Council and some other concerns that are prepared to not necessarily fund some of these activities but also kind of have his back when it comes to these fights with the legislature. He also has millions of dollars that he can spend on ads and he says he's perfectly willing to do that to to run counter ads which I remember one point last year Governor Paterson said you know after they run these ads against me I didn't even like myself and he was really hurt his numbers went down every year that it is always known historically those ads have been effective in blunting the cuts that the governor wants to make.

And Cuomo understands that. Let's move over to the transition team announcement. Team Cuomo came out came out with is the people who will be on his transition team. We saw a pretty diverse group there is there's Republicans there's Democrats white black Latino. I think it was a response maybe to some of some of the criticism that he didn't have enough minorities on his staff during the campaign. He reached out to a wide variety of people from from various communities Hispanic community Nydia Velazquez is one of his key advisers a congresswoman from down the street from a congressman from downstate he's got black representatives he has unions. He has business it's just a wide swath of people in it which makes me wonder how effectively he's got so many people it's not a large opening to what will be really something in there for everybody. Everybody yes. So you wonder what is the what's what does it all mean is it is this purely symbolic or is he just trying to gather as much input as he can maybe a little bit of both. And we know that the lieutenant governor Bob Duffy will be leading the team. We also saw GOP

on a diet a county executive Joni Mahoney. Part of the I guess that the big part of that I think you know putting Bob Duffy in charge of the transition who is going to be leading Andrew Cuomo is upstate revitalization efforts during the administration. I think that was Andrew Cuomo maybe sending a message to everybody that look my focus right now is on fixing the New York state economy particularly the upstate economy putting Bob Duffy there kind of sends that message of OK here's an upstate guy who understands the upstate issues including property tax relief the need to bring jobs and stop the flight of New Yorkers from the upstate area so putting Bob Duffy There was if it wasn't symbolic then it sends a clear message saying look people you know this is an upstate issue and I'm putting an upstate guy in charge and he's also taken on some of the unions in Rochester he's battled with having a bit of a police officer himself and the police too. He was he battled the Rochester police union over some issues I believe benefits and pension and he's also going through an issue right now with

trying to gain mayoral control for schools you know as well which is not supported by some educators. Right the big three largest five districts in New York State now have Merrell control there. They're called the Big Five but for years some of the smaller you could call them the second tier cities Albany Binghamton etc. They've wanted to have mayoral control also thinking that it could maybe streamline things with some of their troubled school systems. One thing I want to talk about real quick before we move on from the transition. Governor David Paterson and Andrew Cuomo were at that press conference and they really had nothing but nice things to say about each other let's take a look. We witnessed something this year that was very unique. Candidates usually campaign in poetry and talk about the dreams and ideals of New York and certainly the attorney general was no different than any other candidate. But he went beyond that to address the real truth about the economy as it stands and the actions that the state is going to have to take to ameliorate that situation.

Rarely have statewide candidates for governor or senator anything such as that been so honest and is so pragmatic about the future. So I think that he's off to a tremendous start. We've been friends for many many years. David and I. And I thank you more the personal level for is his hospitality and his courtesy and his professionalism all through this. Let's examine their relationship. These guys were almost opponents in a Democratic primary earlier this year before Paterson eventually dropped out how the how is the relationship between the two. I think it's ok I think Paterson has come to terms with the fact that he's not running he's decided not to run for governor he's not going to be governor after the first of the year and as far as I can tell he's actually laid some of the groundwork for Cuomo to help ease the transition primarily. One of the big things that he's done is he's stopped he is starting the process the painful process of state layoffs of some state employees he's looking to lay off almost 900 state employees after the end of

this year. And in a way that that saves money going forward Cuomo is facing. I think it's a three hundred fifteen billion dollars budget deficit for this fiscal year. Governor Paterson is called he wants the legislature to come back to try to cut that deficit. It's unclear whether they will. But I think he's actually trying to see seems to be easing the transition. And one point that Patterson's made in that 350 million dollar deficit is you know I cut out a lot of the low hanging fruit this mid-year budget gap could be a lot worse if it weren't for a lot of the cuts that I pushed for in the beginning of the year and over the summer. Well since that budget certainly was dragged out into August he's trying to. Clean up some of the unfinished financial problems before Cuomo takes office. It appears you gotta imagine if their relationship wasn't very good who knows if he'd be going that extra step right. Well you could just say well the legislature's not going to come back and the new governor will have to deal with this added budget deficit.

Also would be difficult for an outgoing governor to say you know I left with a three hundred fifteen million dollar budget deficit. But let's talk about that is there any chance the legislators are going to come back if Paterson calls them. It is their obligation. These guys although some of them are men and women were voted out they're still technically senators assembly folks until December 30 first. It's hard to see I mean I really think without clearing up the Senate without really knowing who's going to be in charge of the Senate next year it's just so unsettled right now it's hard to imagine them getting much done between now and the end of the year although they have come back in the past and they haven't always done what the governors wanted and they always haven't always made the cuts that he's wanted and that's the primary goal here so you've got a Democratic conference that hasn't been very cohesive since it took charge of the Senate in 2009. You've got three senators who lost re-election. There are a lot of time from the north country. Brian Foley from Long Island to Koski from Buffalo. You've got three more who might also lose reelection. One of those races is expected to drag out until the

beginning of next year even during the recount. So you know it's likely that they won't be able to get serious things done they might be able to approve a six hundred seven million dollar million dollars in federal aid for schools. But when it comes to making cuts as in getting rid of that deficit that might be a little bit more difficult there's some pro-forma issues that they could some not exactly virtuous things as it was too late that the state already has this school aid money they're supposed to formally approve it and they could come back and do that. The governor also has I think it's one hundred forty five nominations that are outstanding to various boards commissions some are some are paid jobs some frankly are political patronage jobs that he wants to give out to some of his supporters. It's unclear whether the Senate would go along with that as well. All right that is all the time we have for this week our thanks to Dick Reisman. I'm going to a new service and Rick Karlin of the Albany Times Union. Time now to take a look at this week's New York now poll question Are you confident

Andrew Cuomo can help ease the state's fiscal problems. Check out our choices on line at W M H2 org slash New York now. You can e-mail us at NY now at WME org or just go on our Facebook site. Last week we asked do you want Democrats or Republicans to control the state Senate. And the winner is Democrats getting 59 percent of the vote. Let's hear from a few viewers who chimed in. Greg from AM Hurst watching us on W and he voted Democrats but says it doesn't matter. They are all corrupt. Paul from Brooklyn watching us and w ne t also voted for the Dems. There are few honest brokers in Albany but the Pedro Espada episode proved Republicans to be on untrustworthy. Wendy in Canada Harry chose the GOP simply same balance. And finally Lynn from Gelderland said Senate Republicans have already spent decades being a roadblock to new ideas in our

state. A Republican majority would mean big time gridlock no matter what party you picked. Thanks for taking the time to write in and we look forward to hearing from you next week. It may only be November but some of us across the state got a few inches of the white stuff a few days ago. Snow is obviously essential for winter sports and ski resorts need lots of it. Now since Mother Nature doesn't always cooperate many ski areas have to use a lots of energy to make their own snow. Now while that process keeps them in business it's also the industry's biggest financial threat because of the rising cost of energy. This week our Dan Brazil goes on the Innovation Trail and takes a look at how ski areas are using technology and going green to remain economically viable. New York state is home to 50 ski areas more than any other state according to the organization ski areas of New York. The sport generates millions of dollars every year and more than two billion nationwide.

You are most curious. Our very bottom line driven I mean it's actually a very tough business. To make money and. You know the conventional wisdom in the ski industry is the way to the way to make a small fortune in the S. ski industry is to start with a large one. Scott Berwick the chief engineer at Hunter Mountain in the Catskill says that's because capital costs to keep ski areas running are extraordinary. Take for example the new lift at Hunter. That piece of equipment cost the resort more than five million dollars. So everywhere we can change can save money. Especially on our energy costs going forward. We consider that whenever we make a new purchase Berwick's says while he can keep costs down his industry is vulnerable to forces he cannot control. Most importantly the weather the average snowfall in the Catskills is about 100 inches per season. One year of poor snowfall could affect the bottom line. We've also had winters when we've had 30 inches of snow.

And we would be sitting with all of our investment Idol if we didn't make snow. And that's where energy cost becomes a burden. Berwick says Hunter spends about a million dollars a year on electricity just to power up the snow guns. Hunter snowmaking system was once the largest in the country earning it the nickname snowmaking capital of the world. Jimmy peek a resort just across the border in Massachusetts had the same problem. We are an energy hog making snow. It's a it's a requirement for industry it's the only way you can have an insurance policy to protect your business. President CEO Brian Fairbank says three years ago Jimmy Peake got another insurance policy. This a wind turbine. So many people think that we did it that I did it because we were just going to be environmental stewards. But I have to tell you business reasons created the demand to make it happen. Because our power rates went up 50 percent one year in 2005. When I saw those price escalators and I recognized that

we had a resource of the wind blowing when in the winter when we need power it was the first ski area in the northeast to install a turbine. Fairbanks says he had already done so much to cut costs. There was nothing else he could do to keep Jimmy peak competitive with other resorts out west. The ski areas in Colorado get enough natural snow he says. They don't burn as much cash in making snow. Now Zephyr as the turbine is called generates more than 30 percent of the electricity at Jimmy peak. Other ski resorts in New York State are looking at Sephora and wondering if they could do the same thing. You know Brian Fairbank Jimminy peak is a real pioneer I mean my hat is off to him. For being the you know a pioneer in doing the new wind turbine and I think here they're going to do two more so it's it's very impressive. Berwick at Hunter Mountain is definitely impressed his resort has been trying for years to save on energy their lives. Snow making machines and light bulbs are all

more energy efficient. There's really nowhere else to go he says to find more savings. We've already done a lot of it we've been working since 1980 trying to save energy back in the early 80s we even stalled a wind generator. And it didn't work out. That's because he says when generating technology wasn't as good as it is today Hunter is now in a partnership with some private investors to build a wind farm near the resort. This is one of the generators. It's a green megaphone like building with turbine spinning inside to create electricity. Berwick says with this initiative Hunter will stabilize its energy costs for years to come. Now one of the great things about it is this is not going to be a 300 foot high windmill. These are all. These all look like buildings and they're 80 feet tall or so. And so they're not going to be these huge things on the landscape.

They're within the Catskill park and within the inner city watershed. So they have an additional overlay just like being in the Adirondacks. Additional regulations additional restrictions additional hurdles to clear as they try to do business. A similar ban Pete Lopez who represents this part of the region says he's been working with Hunter Mao and the state to make sure the project is successful and the resort remains competitive. How important is their success to that community. I would say it's huge. And again I was just on the phone with the Green County Economic Development Office. I would say somewhere around 200 million dollars worth of revenues generated in the tourism industry. Lopez says many communities with ski resorts depend on those tourism dollars to keep their economy going. If the tourism based economy were to fail. They are but by far the largest employer private sector employer or individuals in the region. So some people would be very very much at risk to avoid that risk.

Berwick says it's only a matter of time before skiers see some sort of renewable energy generation at their favorite resort on the Innovation Trail for New York now. I'm Dan Brazil. The Innovation Trail is a collaboration between five upstate public media outlets where the goal is to help you gain a better understanding of the connection between technological breakthroughs and the revitalization of the upstate economy. For more on this story and others like it you can go to Innovation Trail dot org. That's all the time we have for this week. Thanks so much for watching and we leave you today with some trademark humor from Governor David Paterson. Have a great week and we'll see you next time right here on this PBS station. I. Feel very assured being replaced by someone I think is going to do an excellent job. He walked in with a baseball bat at my thought. Funding for New York now is provided by NTT

divisional funding provided by the LEO Cox speech philanthropic foundation day. Hi everyone I'm Matt Ryan from New York and now this week in our poll question we're asking are you confident Andrew Cuomo can help ease the state's fiscal problems. Log onto our Web site to cast your vote if w any teen doubt or in slash New York now.

There you can find all of our past programs as well plus keep tabs on us on line by going to our Facebook and Flickr pages. We hope to see you next time right here on New York now.