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Cuomo plans ambitious first 100 days of 2019

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Gov. Andrew Cuomo presented his legislative agenda for 2019 during a speech in New York City Monday

Gov. Andrew Cuomo is beginning 2019 a little early. Cuomo, in a speech at the New York City Bar Association, outlined what he admits is an ambitious agenda for the first 100 days of his third term, which starts Jan. 1.  

Cuomo’s plans for the new year include codifying the abortion rights in the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade into state law. He also wants to protect the provisions of the federal Affordable Care Act in state statute, including protections for people with pre-existing conditions.

He said he’ll seek passage of anti-discrimination legislation for transgender New Yorkers, strengthen gun control laws and expand voting access, including making Election Day a state holiday. And the governor said it’s time to permit victims of childhood sexual abuse to sue their abusers, and for New York to join 10 other states that already have legalized recreational marijuana.

Cuomo often blamed the failure of many of those items on the state Senate, where Republicans controlled the chamber. He said it will now be easier to enact many of the changes, since the Democrats gained nearly two-thirds of the seats in the Senate in November’s election. Democrats already lead the state Assembly.

"Now is the time to make these changes, there are no more excuses, my friends," Cuomo said to applause. "Now is the time to stand up and lead." 

The governor borrowed the theme for his address from a New Yorker who served the longest term as president of the United States — Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Cuomo has said repeatedly that he’s not seeking higher office. But he said because of President Donald Trump and his policies, the nation is facing an "historic social crisis," similar to the economic crisis that FDR faced during the Great Depression. And Cuomo said in New York, he wants to do something about it.

"We have a president who simply doesn’t believe in FDR’s famous Four Freedoms," said Cuomo, referring to Roosevelt’s speech on Jan. 6, 1941. "And is affirmatively creating fear and want and stifling freedom of speech and worship."

Cuomo said he wants to extend the state’s temporary tax surcharge on millionaires when it expires at the end of 2019, and wants to continue a property tax cap that’s been in place since 2011. And he proposed what he calls a "Green New Deal" for New York, with a plan to make the state carbon emission-neutral by 2040.

Cuomo said even though he will be dealing with a legislature of the same party for the first time since he’s been governor, he does not expect it all to go smoothly and is anticipating some "adversity."

Some of the disagreements may center on the amount of money the state gives to schools. Many Democrats, including several newly elected state senators, want the state finally fulfill a 12-year-old court order that said New York needs to spend billions more a year on its poorest schools. Cuomo said it’s time to move past that court decision and redistribute existing aid more equitably within individual school districts.

"These are ghosts of the past," he said. "And distractions from the present."

The New York State Board of Regents, as well as a group made up of teachers, principals and the school boards association, said state aid to schools needs to be increased by $2 billion to fulfill the court order. 

The school funding advocacy group Alliance for a Quality Education, in a statement, followed up on the governor’s "A Christmas Carol" analogy, saying "Cuomo is the Ebenezer Scrooge of public schools" and that the aid formula devised after the court decision is not a "fictitious ghost of the past" but rather, New York state law.

Karen DeWitt is Capitol Bureau Chief for New York State Public Radio, a network of 10 public radio stations in New York State. She has covered state government and politics for the network since 1990.