Cuomo’s hurry-up offense

Our beloved governor never ceases to amaze and delight and keep us light on our feet. His legislative partners, the alldemocratic dream team, would no doubt agree.

Last Thursday, the day after the new legislative session began, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced during an interview with Alan Chartock on WAMC that his annual budget message would be this coming Tuesday, Jan. 15. That’s 17 days earlier than scheduled. The budget message is when the governor sets his agenda for the fiscal year starting April 1 and attaches some semblance of the anticipated economics involved. The governor also said the budget message would be brimming with all the liberal priorities you’ve heard so much about over and over since the last election.

So welcome to Planet Albany, you new legislators. Yes, this is how it works. You just never know.

During the coming two weeks, the newly-elected Democratic Senate majority, under the baton of Andrea Stewart-cousins, in consort with the established Democratic Assembly majority led by Speaker Carl Heastie, is supposed to show us what an efficient machine they can be passing a wide array of bills featuring the above-mentioned “liberal priorities.” Priorities that most of us New Yorkers have wanted to see passed for years but which were blocked by boneheaded Republicans.

However, the last time Democrats held a majority in the state Senate, they promptly lit a dumpster fire and vividly demonstrated why they should not be in charge. That was more than a little responsible for keeping Republicans a majority in that house for a decade. So job one for the new Democratic Senate majority is to show competency. Everybody in charge, that is to say the governor, stressed it was important if they hoped to keep the majority. That was the plan.

So two weeks of ferocious competence was laid out with baskets placed under low hanging fruit to be sequentially plucked and processed, from electoral and campaign reforms to women’s reproductive rights, support for Dreamers and a dozen more. Good stuff. Meaty stuff. The governor said he was enthusiastically on board, and all was sweet. With policy, at lease. Not so with conditional pay raises.

Then in effect he pulls the rug out from under his collaborators, giving them exactly one day instead of two weeks to lay out and lead their agendas, before he takes over the charge. So why did he do this? And does it matter?

Because he can’t help himself. He is who he is. You can’t change the nature of the scorpion, or the lion. He is only comfortable leading, not following. From the beginning of his first term, Cuomo has always made sure he

controlled the narrative, set the agenda, defined success and failure, the direction to take. No, he wasn’t always right, but he needs to be in control, always.

With a budget message on Feb. 1 too much is left to the control, and mischief, of others. Getting out in front is what Cuomo does, and he’s doing it again. Education funding will be thorny. Yet again ethics reforms, carefully closing the LLC loophole that has brought him so much campaign funding in the past, placating his real estate buddies in the city, the bottomless maw of finally fixing the Gotham subways. A $3 billion state budget deficit predicted by the Citizens Budget Commission for New York by end of next year, $16 billion by the end of 2022. The uncertainties from Washington. A state infrastructure suffering from the perennial diversion of funding for the governor’s pet projects, like the Tappan Zee bridge. A green new deal that makes no sense at all.

So does the governor’s new hurry-up offense ultimately matter in terms of what gets passed this session? Probably not. He would control that regardless. But it will influence priorities and pace. He is after all chasing FDR’S 100 days. For his legislative partners, when you lose control of the narrative, you risk becoming a footnote in someone else’s story.

Heastie’s testy reaction to the governor’s move was, “I’m not being governed by what the governor wants to put in his budget.” I don’t know if he actually believes it, but it’s wise counsel, for him and his Senate counterpart. Take the long view. Job one is still job one and the governor won’t be around forever. He’s showing signs of restlessness.

Which brings us to the other thing about moving up the spring legislative schedule to maybe clear the decks: 2020. Does Iowa beckon?

The news service City & State recently asked a number of knowledgeable state political operatives which New Yorkers would announce for the presidency in 2019. One of those asked was John Mcardle, for years a top state Senate GOP spokesman, back when there was a GOP in New York.

“Sen. Gillibrand and Mayor de Blasio. Gov. Cuomo will continue to do everything presidential candidates do except announce that he’s running.” Smart man, that Mcardle.

Which explains why we have been treated lately to national stump speeches by the governor embracing FDR and Ellis Island. Whaaat?

Yes, it’s going to be a long year.