Tax cap, ethics reform are high on the Cuomo agenda

With the inauguration of Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Saturday, New York state officially ended its brief but disastrous Spitzer era. Eliot Spitzer, the former attorney general, was elected governor in 2006 in a landslide and then entered office not to make friends in Albany, not even to govern, but to rule the land. He crashed and burned in one of the country’s most notorious sex scandals, after which he resigned and Lt. Gov. David Paterson assumed the state’s reins.

Paterson appeared promising at first, but he could do little to quell the political maelstrom that was brewing in the state Legislature, where partisan rancor reached historic proportions. A handful of Democrats in the Senate helped to engineer a power grab, which many called a coup, to restore Republicans to the majority in June 2009. The move held up the state’s business for weeks, costing taxpayers millions of dollars while sending New Yorkers’ confidence in their government to an all-time low and making the Empire State a national laughingstock.

Now the time has come for Cuomo, son of former Gov. Mario Cuomo, to lead. He must begin by working to restore order to one of the nation’s most dysfunctional legislatures. That will mean making friends, not issuing orders and caveats the way Spitzer did. Based on Cuomo’s early signals to legislative leaders, he appears ready and willing to strike a conciliatory tone.

He has found common ground with the Republican leadership in the GOP-controlled Senate, in particular Majority Leader Dean Skelos of Rockville Centre, by calling for a 2 percent cap on annual property-tax increases. The Senate had previously passed a 4 percent cap, which Paterson had said he would sign, but the Democratic-controlled Assembly was unwilling to entertain the idea.

Polls have shown that New Yorkers are fed up with paying some of the nation’s highest property taxes. Clearly, this is an issue that must be addressed.