Cuomo envisions $100 million genome research facility

ALBANY Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo unveiled an election-year grab bag of policy proposals Wednesday in his fourth State of the State, including funding for a genome research consortium between Buffalo and Manhattan, bonuses for top-performing public school teachers, modest tax breaks for property owners and tougher penalties for repeat drunk drivers and teens who text and drive.

Cuomo said he will dip again into his pledge made several years ago to spend $1 billion on Buffalo job creation efforts by authorizing a $100 million genome research program with $50 million going to the University at Buffalo and potentially other groups in the Buffalo area to connect scientists in Western New York with genome researchers at a new center in Manhattan.

Cuomo and researchers involved in the project said jobs and scientific breakthroughs to treat cancer and other diseases will result from the state investment. He said five companies already have committed to locate or expand on the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus to be a part of a consortium with a not-for-profit genome center in Manhattan that opened last fall. Cuomo said the research work will create an entirely new industry for Western New York.

The 69-minute address also included a call for a major, $2 billion borrowing to fund new technological expansions and space for prekindergarten classrooms a bond program political analysts say is likely to bolster turnout in key geographic areas for an initiative that will appear on the same ballot as Cuomo in his first re-election bid this November.

A number of ideas, including expansion of abortion rights and taxpayer-financed campaigns, were rejected less than a year ago by Republicans who control the State Senate, and Cuomo made no mention, despite claims last fall to The Buffalo News that he would, about penalties or dramatic action for failing public schools.

Cuomo spent a third of his speech talking about what he called his accomplishments in his first three years, from a property tax cap to legalizing gay marriage to a sweeping gun-control measure.

In three years, my friends, you have reversed decades of decline, Cuomo told lawmakers in a state convention center near the Capitol.

Republican and Conservative Party leaders dismissed the Cuomo speech as election-year rhetoric with major new spending plans from a governor who should have embraced deeper tax cuts when he first took office.

In a hall with teeth-chattering temperatures, a favorite thermostat setting by this governor for his major, longer speeches, Cuomo offered the political spectrum of ideas in his address. For liberals, he said he will issue regulations to permit people with certain medical conditions to obtain marijuana to treat pain and other ailments at 20 hospitals around the state, seek to expand abortion rights, and raise the automatic, mandatory age from 16 to 18 at which teens arrested for crimes can be tried as an adult.

For right-of-center New Yorkers, he offered up a tax cut package for upstate manufacturers and beleaguered property taxpayers, a new state college focusing on counter-terrorism and homeland security and several criminal-justice measures, including crackdowns on repeat drunk drivers who he said should permanently lose their license if convicted of three DWI offenses.

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Cuomo envisions $100 million genome research facility