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Cuomo to Take on Education Interests

Governor Cuomo says he intends to take on what he calls the “education bureaucracy” this year.  Cuomo’s new budget plan, to be released Tuesday afternoon, will likely further that goal.

One day before he was to release his budget plan, Governor Cuomo spoke at the state’s Martin Luther King Day commemoration. He attacked the education establishment, continuing a theme he began in his State of the State message.

“It’s about the education bureaucracy perpetuating the education bureaucracy,” said Cuomo. “It’s become about the business of education more than achievement in education.”

The governor in recent days has been particularly incensed over the failure of many school districts and the  teacher’s union to come up with new teacher evaluation plans in time for a deadline for federal grant money. In late December, the state’s education commissioner froze some of the state’s $700 million dollars in Race to the Top grants, saying some schools, including in New York City and several upstate cities, had not complied with the teacher evaluation requirements.  The federal education secretary, Arne Duncan, wrote a letter chiding New York State for the failure.

Cuomo says he considers the original agreement, made in 2010, unworkable. He says there’s no evaluation system in place yet, “because the bureaucracy doesn’t want one” . The governor says if the Race to the Top grant is lost, it will hit the state’s poorest schools the hardest.

“I’m not going to let that happen,” the governor vowed.

The New York Post and the Daily News are reporting that Cuomo will try to force a resolution to the teacher evaluation stalemate in his budget, by requiring that schools who want a promised 4% increase in education funding must agree with a newer plan devised by the State’s Education Department.

The governor , after the speech, was non committal, saying he’s “considering” the plan.

The governor is likely to get push back from many in the legislature, who are close to education interests like the teachers unions and local school leaders. But Cuomo’s challenge to educators comes on the same day a new poll finds that the governor’s job performance rating is the highest ever during his 13 months in office, at 62%. Steve Greenberg, with Siena College, says Cuomo has the political capital to take on what might be a bruising fight.

Greenberg says voters “like individual teachers, but they’re not big fans of the teachers unions”.

“From the public’s perspective, Andrew Cuomo is doing what they want him to do,” said Greenberg.

The governor’s primary task in the budget will be closing a $2 billion dollar gap. While the deficit is considerably smaller than last year’s $10 billion dollar hole, Cuomo has fewer options. In addition to spending more on schools, he’s also agreed to raise health care funding by 4%, and has said that after extending a tax on the wealthy late last year, he does not want to impose any more taxes in the budget.   

While it won’t do anything to close the current gap, Cuomo says he intends to once again pursue a new benefit tier for state workers that offers lower benefits, and possibly, for the first time, the option of 401k retirement accounts. The governor says the state “desperately” needs pension reform.

“It’s vitally important,” Cuomo said. “The taxpayers need pension reform.”

The governor says he won’t be adding additional staff to police hydro fracking in the Department of Environmental Conservation’s budget this year. That’s because, Cuomo says, the review process is still going on, and he says his spending plan will not “anticipate” the approval of hydrofracking in New York. An advisory panel appointed by the governor is still trying to come up with a tax and fee structure that could help pay for any new staff positions.

Karen DeWitt is Capitol Bureau chief for the New York Public News Network, composed of a dozen newsrooms across the state. She has covered state government and politics for the network since 1990.