Tagged: robert duffy

Lieutenant Governor Robert Duffy has been beating a path back and forth across upstate New York, as he campaigns for Governor Andrew Cuomo’s budget initiatives.

Duffy made his second stop in Syracuse this week on Thursday, this time to drum up support for changes to pensions and Medicaid funding.

But this time he brought some friends.

Duffy led a hearing of the 11-member Mandate Relief Council [PDF], made up of members of Cuomo’s administration and elected lawmakers. The group heard testimony from central New York government and business leaders at Le Moyne College.

The Finger Lakes Regional Economic Development Council held its first meeting of 2012 Wednesday. It was the council's first public session since disappointing funding results were announced last December.

Details of the second round of regional council funding are still fuzzy.

But if one thing was for sure, it was this: Council members were not admitting defeat.

"First, we were winners," insisted council co-chair and University of Rochester president Joel Seligman.

Meeting for the first time since winning $100 million in a state competition late last year, the Western New York Regional Council (WNYREDC) was still aglow with pride Tuesday.

But in 2012, the council faces a litany of new tasks, starting its sophomore season with a to-do list longer than ever.

In fact, shortly into Tuesday’s meeting, the 30-member body was told their work has only really begun.

“Remember this is taxpayer dollars - so we need to ensure there’s appropriate documentation and due diligence demonstrating that the awardees did in fact do what they said they’re going to do,” Christina Orsi, a regional director with Empire State Development, told the council as it gathered in horseshoe-shaped seating arrangement.

In May of 1984, the recently-elected Governor Mario Cuomo got up in front of the press at the Buffalo Convention Center to talk about his new initiative to help create jobs: Ten councils to help plan regional economic development.

This summer, his son, Governor Andrew Cuomo, is touting nearly the same thing: Ten councils, to help plan regional economic development.

More than 250 New Yorkers will sit on the regional economic councils.

They come from all over New York, yet many aren’t strangers to working with each other – or with the state.

And those complex relationships mean that no council member will be completely free of the possibility of charges of conflict of interest, as they work to pick the winners and losers in the future of economic development in New York.