“Whatever the Bronx Wants, the Bronx Gets”

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo outlined his state budget at Lehman College on February 20, addressing education, the economy, minimum wage and equal rights for women.

Education is a top priority said Cuomo to a crowd of educators and students. “Our program in two words is more and better.” The U.S. is falling behind because other countries educate their children more, said Cuomo. The solution? He offered three options: extend the school day, extend the school year, or a combination of both. The choice, Cuomo said, would be up to individual districts, but the state would offer an incentive of paying for 100 percent of the cost of implementing the change.

New York State needs to revamp its job training, cultivate innovation and retain top talent in order to attract businesses, said Cuomo. “Many of our workforce training programs are from a different era,” he said. Such a generic, one-size-fits-all-approach no longer works, he said, instead New York needs to link its training directly to available jobs.

Cuomo said New York has an estimated 210,000 unfilled jobs because businesses can’t find employees with the necessary skills. “Our job training programs need to reverse that,” said Cuomo.  Identify the employers, identify the skills needed, create apprenticeship programs, train folks for those jobs, and flip the paradigm, he said.

To do this, the state will subsidize innovation across the state and help form partnerships between higher education and businesses. With one condition — that businesses stay in New York. “We invest in them, but they stay and they grow with us,” said Cuomo.

(Audio by Megan Skehan)

The governor said he hoped to raise the minimum wage from $7.25 to $8.75 an hour. “Jobs have to pay a wage that supports a family,” said Cuomo. “A living wage.” He went on, adding up the costs of living, transportation, child care to illustrate how woefully inadequate the current minimum wage is for supporting a family.

Also in attendance were a handful of local and state politicians, including Bronx Borough President Ruben Díaz Jr., New York State Senators Jeffrey Klein and Gustavo Rivera and Assemblymen Jeffrey Dinowitz, among others.

During his introduction, Díaz mentioned that Cuomo could be “hard,” to which the governor later responded, “I think I’m easy, easy like Sunday morning. Whatever the Bronx wants, the Bronx gets.”

Cuomo said he hopes that New York would continue to lead the nation when it came to progressive issues, like it did with gay marriage. One such issue that remains to be addressed, he said, is gender equality.

“The truth is, society still discriminates against women,” said Cuomo. “As hard as that reality may sound, it is the truth.”

The audience erupted in thunderous applause for Cuomo’s proposal for a Women’s Equality Act, a ten-point plan.

A few items in the act:

Shatter the glass ceiling by passing a real equal pay law – treble damages for underpayment or discrimination.

Have zero tolerance for sexual harassment in the workplace period.

Strengthen employment, lending, and credit discrimination laws.

Strengthen human trafficking laws.

“This state was the birthplace of the women’s rights movement, Seneca Falls. We made history once, we will make history again,” said Cuomo.