Next week, Governor Andrew Cuomo will give his highly-anticipated State of the State address to a video camera, instead of hundreds of people crammed into the Albany-based Empire State Plaza Convention Center, to listen to his often roaring monologue describing the best of what New York state has to offer and all that it offered the year before.
In the speech, the governor also lays out his plans for the coming year without tying it to numbers leaving the audience to wonder how he will pay for it all. That detail, of course, comes a few weeks later when he delivers his state budget message to the Legislature.
The governor’s speech on Wednesday, January 6, will focus on the hope and optimism the two coronavirus vaccines will have on New Yorkers.
Aside from that piece of good news, the State of the State message this year is probably best left to the governor talking to a camera because what he has to say won’t be the uplifting message with wild applause he often receives during his usual more than an hour long address.
In his State of the State Message the governor will likely focus on how the coronavirus has ravaged the state budget and hammer the Trump Administration for not coming to the rescue with the money needed to solve the financial woes facing New York.
Also absent from this year’s address will be the pomp and circumstance, the lobbying, all important meet and greets, glad-handing and schmoozing over food and drinks by staff and elected officials before and after the address. Much of the end result will be a money-saving exercise the governor probably needs to achieve.
What is often a benefit for one is a hardship for another. This version of the State of the State confab will result from the vendors not being able to supply the backdrops and the food as they lose valuable dollars to keep people employed.
“I would suspect it (the speech) would be virtual with a very limited audience. That would be my guess at this time,” Assembly Republican Leader Will Barclay (R –Pulaski, Oswego County) told The Jewish Press. “Since he (the governor) moved it (delivering the speech) out of the Assembly Chamber, it’s really become his program without much legislative input on that program, and I suspect now with COVID it’s going to be even more so. I naturally assume it’s going to be remote. Maybe you’re going to have the leaders there but that shouldn’t be hard to accomplish. We’ll be in Albany anyways. I don’t feel any time stress about that.”
The governor is likely to call for legalizing and taxing recreational marijuana as well as proposing other new items to add to the revenue stream. The message is likely to be less about new programs and more about the financial crisis. Assembly Republicans are going to try to keep tax hikes to a minimum and aim to cut spending.
“As these Covid-related costs and the impact of the shutdowns are hitting our revenue we’re going to have to make some really tough decisions,” Barclay said. “The federal government didn’t provide a direct bailout to state and local governments so that will create some challenges. The fight such as it is between us and the majority will be over how to solve those budget crises. The knee-jerk reaction of the majority (the democrats) always is to raise taxes. We’re having record numbers of people leave New York state. If we continue to do what we have done over the last couple of decades with the tax schemes that we have in New York we’re going to see that continue to accelerate and that’s not good for anybody. We have to come up with decisions of how we are going to balance the budget but I think we feel strongly in our conference that raising taxes is not the solution to our fiscal problems.”
Barclay sees a remote Legislative session continuing for at least a few more months.
“I suspect the legislature itself, for at least several months, will be continued on remote. Obviously you saw we continued the rules so that they can bridge until January 6 to do remote, which I happen to agree with. On the 6th we’ll probably end up adopting last year’s rules and we’ll have to work with the majority on what rules we’ll have going forward. Obviously a remote session is going to be a reality for us at least through March but we’ll have to see how things progress.”
Barclay wants to move to in-person voting on legislative bills and debates sooner than later but realizes safety comes first.
“The remote legislative sessions have been better than I anticipated. They still are a far cry from what it’s like to be in person and I think we all should strive to get back to when it’s safe and when it doesn’t hurt staff, members or families or anyone else. We should strive and work to get back to the legislature meeting in person,” Barclay said.
When it comes to a safety first mantra, Barclay, 51, speaks from first-hand experience. He contracted the virus in early November, just after Election Day. He gave The Jewish Press a detailed personal account of how this impacted him and his family.
“I was fortunate. My symptoms were relatively mild. I didn’t have any cold symptoms, interestingly. I just felt fatigued. One day I felt like I had trouble getting out of bed, but otherwise I was pretty good. I was not bedridden or anything.
“I was kind enough to give my wife, Margaret, the Covid and she definitely had more cold-like symptoms. She had congestion, a runny nose, coughing. I never had any of that. We’re both through it and we’re both doing fine.
“When I was exposed I felt fine for the next two days. I think I know where I was exposed to it. Say I was exposed on a Tuesday, I really didn’t feel any symptoms until Friday evening but it was Saturday of that week that I really felt fatigued. Sunday I felt much better. I was up and about. I wasn’t seeing anybody because it was a weekend fortunately. I was supposed to go to Albany on Monday but I didn’t feel 100%. Some people I had been around during the week I found out had gotten it so I presumed I had it.
“From the time I made the appointment and found out the other people I was with also had the virus I went down to get tested, the rapid test and it came back positive. I wasn’t really surprised and then I had to quarantine. My wife started to feel bad on Tuesday the following week. So she and my two boys all had to quarantine for a lot longer than I was quarantined. My boys never got it, that we’re aware of. The boys are 20 and 18 and living with us. I was the first to come off quarantine even though I was the one who brought it into the house.
“The governor tweeted or emailed best wishes but never called.”
Barclays’ 89-year-old father, H. Douglas Barclay, a former state Senator and former Ambassador to El Salvador during the George W. Bush administration, has not contracted the virus and remains safe living on the Oswego County family farm with his 84-year old wife Sara, also known as “Dee Dee.”
In a sobering end to the year 2020, more than 30,200 New Yorkers have succumbed to coronavirus, two-thirds of those deaths coming during last April alone. May was the second deadliest month and December was the third deadliest. The other six months of 2020 combined, June to November – 2,707 fatalities – don’t total the death toll from December.
Here’s hoping 2021 is a better year filled with good health, much happiness and a time when we can all hug each other once again.