Annual Meeting of the Metropolitan Development Association
OnCenter
Syracuse, NY
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Thank you. That is a wonderful reception. When you get a reception like that, you feel like you’re standing on top of the North Pole. The problem is that, every step you take thereafter, you’re going south. [Laughter]
It is a deep honor for me to be here today among all of you including County Executive Mahoney; Mayor Driscoll; and the President of Syracuse University, Nancy Cantor. I see the President of the New York City Partnership, a longtime friend of mine, Kathy Wylde is here, and that makes a great statement about this event.
It was great to get that warm introduction from Kenneth Shaw and to meet all of you this afternoon in what I hope will be a collaborative effort to change the course of economic development all over this State, but particularly here in Central New York where people have worked very hard, but have not been able to receive the rewards of that effort.
And so, to Irwin Davis, who is retiring after 31 years as CEO and President of the MDA, I want to bring you, on behalf of all New Yorkers, our deepest appreciation for your service, your efforts and your tremendous, tremendous desire to improve the quality of life here in Syracuse and throughout Central New York. For all of that, we certainly owe you a round of applause. Thank you very much. [Applause]
I was taking a moment to examine some of the finalists for the Creative Core Emerging Business Awards, and I noticed that the innovations they achieved are absolutely amazing.
To think that we might have found substantial design improvements to the DC motor for the first time in 100 years is mind-boggling. But that’s not all. The fact that micro-mirror technology could lead to a state-of-the-art projector that is the size of a matchbox is equally amazing. Night-vision technology in civilian helicopters that will enable first responders to conduct rescue efforts 24 hours a day is something that could save thousands of lives. A business protocol that will allow an individual to go into a store and prepare a three-course gourmet meal in 10 minutes; that’s certainly something I would be interested in. [Laughter]
And the fact that we have developed a hand-held diagnostic device that can not only identify disease and infection, but also assimilate the proper pharmaceutical protocol to treat that is almost unfathomable. Just to make that even clearer, 50 percent of pharmaceutical drugs that were used 50 years ago are now obsolete. Only 22 percent of pharmaceutical drugs are universally accepted, meaning that they can be used to treat any patient, unless the patient has an allergy. Because of that, the ability to distinguish between the different drugs, and which ones match up with a disease, is probably one of the most significant inventions of our time.
But as we look at the great work these finalists have endeavored to achieve, we recognize that it really has a bifurcated value for all of us in this room. It’s not just that it will change the course and quality of our lives. It’s that it will also coincide with an effort to create more jobs. This is really the new frontier of economic development—medical and scientific research; technical advances; the innovation economy.
At our Center for Excellence for Environmental and Energy Systems, right as we speak here at this luncheon, they are working on different technologies that treat air quality, that treat water quality, and enhance the effectiveness of renewable energy technologies.
We find that just a couple of blocks away from the Center for Excellence, at the SUNY-Upstate Medical Center, the medical and scientific research has established an imaging system that will enable us to develop ways in which to treat leukemia and lymphoma at a greater rate. This comes from the stem cell research funding that we have just started allocating this January.
For those of you who are not aware, New York was 50th of the 50 states in terms of stem cell funding. But we passed legislation in our budget, on March 31st of last year, and became the fastest state to turn stem cell legislation into delivery when we gave out $14.5 million dollars to different service providers on January 7, 2008. We are ecstatic over the fact that we went from 50th of the 50 states to the top five, and are pretty much even with the states of Maryland, Illinois and Connecticut. And in our next funding source, on May 10, we will only be surpassed by the State of California, which started stem cell research four years ago.
Even the manufacturing industry in this area has become part of the innovation economy, as Lockheed Martin and the Syracuse Research Corporation are collaborating on what may be the most effective radar system the world has ever seen.
So not only here in Central New York, but in the North Country, in the Mohawk Valley, in the Finger Lakes, and in the Southern Tier, we are finding great solutions to the problems of our time.
And yet, our economy continues to sag.
We have to ask ourselves: why is that the case?
Why is it that, with all of these companies working as hard as they are, and with all of these innovations, we still have an economic system in Central New York struggling for survival? Why is it that in Syracuse, the job growth rate has been 2 percent over the last decade, when the national average has been 9 percent?
We see the problem of our children leaving—28 percent of them with college degrees—and going to other states. We see that our cities are struggling in the midst of crisis.
When I became Governor, I had a kind of interesting circumstance happen to me. There were a number of people I had lost track of, and would have probably never talked to again in my life, but when they recognized I had become Governor, they got in touch with me. [Laughter] The ones who I had owed money had already gotten in touch with me years before. [Laughter]
But what was interesting was that none of them lived in New York. They lived in North and South Carolina. They lived in Nevada. They lived in Texas. They moved out-of-state because, they said, it’s the highest-taxed state in the Union when you put state and local taxes together. Their quality of life wasn’t what it was in Hempstead, Long Island, where I actually grew up.
There was one individual who I met when I came to Syracuse when I was 17 years old to a program for legally and totally blind students to teach us how to apply ourselves to college—mobility courses, courses in how to use the library, courses in how to interact with teachers. One time, this individual, his name was Marvin Simmons, he and I were sent to find a store on Marshall Street. He reminded me, when he called me up, that when we got to the sign, we couldn’t read it, so he held me up and I read the sign: “Marshall Street.” [Laughter]
So he told me he is now working in Lower Manhattan, and I told him, “Marvin, we’ll have to get together after work.” And he said, “No, I have to get back to the Poconos.” He commutes from the Poconos because the quality of life there is better than it is in New York State.
That is something that I, as Governor, have to apply to my agenda in our first month, which is: think of what it is doing not only to our economy, but to the morale of the citizens of New York, when the great ideas are coming from our institutions, but the jobs are going someplace else.
New York was the state that people moved to in the 1820s, and 30s, and 40s, and 50s, because after we built the Erie-Lackawanna Railroad and established the Erie Canal, people moved where the jobs were. Our population, which had been 3 percent of the national population, went up to 11 percent of the national population because people moved where the jobs were. Now, they’re moving away.
To what can we attribute this growing problem that will envelop us all if we don’t act? In my opinion, it is the lack of a partnership—a lack of a partnership with government, a lack of partnership specifically with State government, whose capital is in Albany.
So what I pledge to you is that whatever was going on is going to change. We are going to be partners in rebuilding this area and increasing the economic development of this region, and every other region in the great State of New York. [Applause]
So how did these other states take our corporations and our businesses away from us? How are these other states attracting our best and our brightest to leave New York?
It’s really very simple. They lowered the cost of business. They created an environment that was business-friendly, and we in New York did not. They developed their infrastructure so there were analogous parks and schools so that families would want to live there, and we in New York did not. They addressed the ancillary problems of high, skyrocketing health care, and the high cost of energy, and we New Yorkers did not.
So what we are going to have to do is build a real partnership and recognize the value of business as the engine of our economy.
And we are going to re-ignite the engine of that economy by recognizing two things:
First, we have to give businesses the tools that you need to create the work environment that will bring people back and keep people here;
And secondly, we are going to have to lower the cost of doing business in the State of New York. [Applause]
This is a promise. But we in public service often make promises that we can’t keep; raise expectations that we can’t fulfill; talk in absurd extremes; and often peddle a bunch of simplistic exaggerations that parody the truth.
But what I’m here to tell you today is that we have already started to fulfill our promise. Within the last two weeks, upon the passage of our New York State Budget, we have kept our promise, and infused $700 million dollars into the economy of New York State.
We didn’t do it by just taking money and throwing it at a problem, as the federal government did in the 1960s and 70s and 80s in a variety of areas.
We came to this region, we talked to the business leaders, we talked to the public servants, and the civic associations, and we heard from you.
We heard the concerns that businesses don’t have access to capital. We heard concerns that we aren’t creating areas that are business friendly, so that not only will people want to move to New York, but they will want to bring their families. We heard the concern that we aren’t taking the research and development that is coming from our collegiate institutions and turning it into a commercial product. At MIT in Massachusetts, 50 state employees develop the findings from research at MIT and put it to practical use in the form of innovation economic efforts.
We don’t do that here in New York, but we will—because not only are we willing to listen, we are also willing to act.
From our City by City Program, we’re going to inject $35 million dollars into this region—one-third of it going directly to Syracuse—in order to make sure that we establish the Connective Corridor and make sure that we have a city that’s vibrant and that serves as a magnet for all other economic commerce.
We are going to put $100 million dollars—the largest amount of money in 25 years—into the development of housing in the Upstate region. And we’re going to do this in a way that creates mixed-use development housing that will coincide with the economic opportunities.
We further plan to improve our State Parks. We are putting $70 million dollars into that endeavor so we will have the proper recreation and cultural facilities so we can derive a life beyond just work or beyond just our academic studies.
We are looking to improve our infrastructure by putting $30 million dollars into the development of our bridges and another $5 million dollars into broadband technology, particularly in underserved areas.
But then—after all of the things we have done as a government—as Kenny Rogers used to say, “You have to know when to hold ’em and you have know when to fold ’em.”
The next thing we have to do is get out of the way and let the businesses operate, and let the society build itself, as it has before, with the right infusion of government assistance and in leaving the process alone so that people can make the business deals that will generate a greater infusion of activity into this economy. [Applause]
It’s very hard when government comes in to get government to go away. But I know a great place to hang out after we’ve given this area the resources to this area that we need. It’s a place called Albany—a place that often has no gravity and no culture. [Laughter]
But we can establish it in that region by starting to recognize that the role of the Legislature is to respond to the issues around it, and not act like it is a separate planet floating out in the ether on its own. [Applause] So Albany does not have to be declassified, like the planet Pluto.
What we actually need to do is focus on developing our economy. Let’s think: how much more foresighted would it have been if we had set this year’s budget not by the rate of personal income growth—which in New York is always an anomaly because of the high salaries that come from New York City—but from the flex inflation growth, which was about 3.6 percent, and done it in such a way that we would not be overspending at a time when we need to save.
Our national economy is reeling. There are 8 million homes where the mortgage value is higher than the home. That number is expected to go up to 15 million right here, within two years, in this country. We are going to lose 20 percent of the entire resources of housing in the United States. That’s $4.5 trillion dollars.
The unemployment rate yielded 95,000 lost jobs in the month of March and now has skyrocketed to 5.1 percent.
Right here in New York State, the 20 largest taxpayers—corporations and banks—paid $72 million dollars in taxes to the State of New York in the month of March. Do you know what they paid last year, in the month of March, in 2007? $533 million dollars. They only paid 14 percent of what they paid last year.
So though we were able to pass a timely budget, and though it responded to the issues in January, how much more foresighted would it have been if we started to cut the fat out of this budget so we can address an already-existing $4 billion dollar deficit for next year?
This isn’t fiscal conservatism; this is fiscal reality. And this is what we have to address before we go out and tax the first business, the first millionaire, or the first person in need that we find. We in government have to tighten our belts and respond to a crisis that’s going on where New York is affected because of the proceeds of Wall Street, which comprise 20 percent of our revenues. And we’ve got to put a stop to this spending spree that’s out of control—that comes from that planet called Albany. [Applause]
Thank you. I thought you would like that. [Laughter]
The reality is that this State, one of the greatest States in our Union, has many times been in this kind of conflict.
When I talked about what happened in the nineteenth century—the migration of people to New York—nobody realized that the State budget at that time was in arrears for 7 out of the 10 years when they first started digging the Erie Canal.
Even in times of crisis, we New Yorkers can show our resilience by looking past the obstacles—because crises are really just the barriers we set between ourselves and our inevitable goals.
So, we can succeed, and this can be done, as long as there is a collaborative and cooperative effort that streams from around this State.
Finally, I just wanted to recognize that today is Earth Day. And I wanted to congratulate the City of Syracuse for becoming the second-greenest city in the Northeast and among the top 20 in this country. [Applause]
The energy consumption in Syracuse is actually 20 percent less than the national average. The Kyoto Conference in 1997 set a limit that there should be 80 percent reduction in emissions by the year 2090. If every state followed Syracuse, we would have this done by 2055—35 years earlier.
So we as a State are going to come in and help your Green Core Initiative. We are going to follow the desire to have a 15 percent reduction in our energy usage by 2015—which we call our “15 by 15” plan. We’re going to follow the 16-point plan of the Renewable Energy Task Force.
And we are going to recognize that we can build new renewable energy sources: wind, solar, hydropower. But we have to recognize that they are not nearly as efficient as the energy sources we are using right now.
So, to get us to that point where we can develop them, we are going to have to look at the creativity that we’ve seen from those nominees for the Creative Core Emerging Business Awards today, to try to help us find the greatest energy sources that we can.
But just as we are in the forefront of greening New York ahead of the national average—we have 20 percent of our energy coming from renewable sources, two and a half times the national average—we can also do that in the area of economic development.
We can call up all of those people we went to high school with and tell them to think about coming back—because New York is a great state, and New York is now open for business.
So it is in that spirit that I thank the MDA for all the work that you’ve done, for being the glue that has kept this region together—and I am very flattered by the opportunity to speak before you this afternoon.
Thank you so much. [Applause]
