State of the State at Sandel

A crowd of Rockville Centre residents heard an abridged version of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s State of the State address on Jan. 14.

The presentation, by Jamie Rubin, the commissioner of NYS Homes and Community Renewal and a former executive director of the Governor’s Office of Storm Recovery, was held at the Sandel Senior Center and took the form of a slideshow of images, data and statistics from Cuomo’s speech the previous day. About 60 people attended, including Mayor Francis X. Murray. The audience was mostly seniors.

A large focus of Cuomo’s address was public works and transportation infrastructure, and included renovating Penn Station, finishing the new Tappan Zee Bridge, adding a third track to the Long Island Rail Road between Floral Park and Hicksville, building an AirTrain at LaGuardia Airport, unifying the maze of terminals at Kennedy Airport, “tax-free” sites for new businesses at Republic Airport and bringing a customs center to MacArthur Airport, which would open it up to international travel.

“We’re investing $26 billion in the MTA’s capital program,” Rubin said. “Some of that spending is going to go on ... new buses, new rail cars — upgrades to everything you can imagine across that system.” He also spoke about “cleaner, brighter” subway stations with Wi-Fi, and the closures necessary to make those changes to a planned 31 stops.

According to the governor’s office, these capital projects, and others, will cost a total of $100 billion over a number of years: $29.1 billion in state funds, $24.8 billion from the federal government, $15.4 billion from the private sector, $13.2 billion from the MTA, $12 billion from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, $3.2 billion from the Thruway Authority and $2.5 billion from New York City funds.

Audience members asked how these long-term projects could be completed if there was a new governor. “That’s why he wants to be so aggressive,” Rubin said of Cuomo. “If we get them far enough along, they won’t stop … You get enough of the funding locked in … These are going to be politically popular programs. No governor will want to stop them.”