Republican gubernatorial hopeful Rob Astorino says New York can spur jobs and economic activity by cutting taxes and regulations, permitting hydraulic fracturing for natural gas and promoting agriculture and high-tech start-ups.
The candidate released a job plan Tuesday during a campaign stop in Binghamton. He says high taxes, burdensome regulations and outdated economic policies are putting New York at a competitive disadvantage.
Astorino says that if elected, he would streamline regulations and government mandates, reduce some taxes and eliminate others, cut state spending and invest $3.6 billion from a banking lawsuit settlement in roads, bridges and transit.
Astorino’s plan also calls for tax credits for new farmers and high-tech start-ups and new regional workforce development councils.
Astorino is the Westchester County executive. He is challenging Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
(AP)
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Westchester County has the highest property taxes in the United States. Astorino is the County Executive. Cuomo will kill him on the tax issue.
Mr. Astorino has reduced taxes in Westchester, unlike Gov. Cuomo in New York. He reduced Westchester’s budget from $1.8 billion to $1.7 billion, and he cut the county’s taxes by 2%. Gov. Cuomo has bloated New York’s budget, and statewide property taxes are on the rise despite his gimmicky rebate plan, one more example of Cuomo’s poor ethics.
Astorino has made it easier to do business in Westchester. For example, a record number of movie productions are now made in Westchester. In contrast, Andrew Cuomo has been a cancer on New York State’s economy. New York State’s spending on welfare and Medicaid are the highest in the nation, and Cuomo has done nothing to reform these dysfunctional plans.
Besides his egregious mismanagement of the state’s economy, Andrew Cuomo has laid waste to the state’s school systems by pushing for the common core, the worst education policy in New York State’s history. Teachers and mothers around the state are in a frenzy because of Cuomo’s poor education policies.
Because of Cuomo’s incompetent handling of the state’s economy, more than 400,000 New Yorkers have left the state during the Cuomo administration.
Worst of all is Cuomo’s poor ethics. It is not just his disbanding of the Moreland Commission when it uncovered his involvement in questionable or illegal campaign contributions. It is also his use of state money to advertise his ridiculous SUNY-based economic program by which a few crony firms are given tax rebates to locate on SUNY campuses. While Cuomo’s plan is a loser and has harmed rather than helped the state’s economy, he spent $200 million on campaign ads advertising the plan around the country. The chief effect of the taxpayer-funded ads has been to further Cuomo’s presidential bid.