The Election's Over. So Let's Talk Issues

When the history of substantive American political campaigns is written, don't bother looking for New York's 2010 gubernatorial contest in the index. Rarely has a state with so many thorny policy problems endured a campaign that dealt with so few of them. Jimmy McMillan's 'stache and Andrew Cuomo's cojones (or lack thereof) got the ink that should have gone to the state's pension system and jobs crisis. And Carl Paladino had as many hallway shouting matches with Fred Dicker as he did debates with his Democratic opponent.

The circus atmosphere was partly a product of the fact that everyone knew who was going to win, but now that the votes are counted is when the real suspense begins. Cuomo's mantra during the "race" was that he wanted to build a mandate for the kind of sweeping change the Empire State desperately needs.

Beginning on Inauguration Day, New Yorkers find out whether he can deliver. Check that: whether and what he can deliver. Shielded by his huge lead in the polls and his main opponent's stupefying bluster, Cuomo faced few questions and gave few answers on what specific policies he plans to pursue. Before the balloting,

City Limits dispatched its reporters to find out what Cuomo was and wasn't saying on key issues. Here's a preview of what to expect when Cuomo takes the oath:

HOUSING

When a former federal housing secretary runs for governor in the midst of a housing-triggered recession in the state where public housing began, does it mean new ideas are coming? Yes and no. There are plenty of worthwhile initiatives in the housing plans candidate Cuomo articulated, advocates say. But there were few bold ideas. And what is left out is as revealing as what is included.

In his campaign materials, Cuomo said he'd push to make the federal Low-Income Housing Tax Credit program—the bedrock of financing the development of affordable housing—more attractive to investors and would take a leadership role among governors to push Congress to fund the fund the National Housing Trust Fund, which Congress created in 2008 but never funded. If the Obama administration gets the amount it wants in the fund, New York State would see $111 million for affordable housing.

Foreclosures continue to roil the state, eviscerating gains in homeownership in black and Latino communities and draining the state's tax base. From February, when the state banking department began keeping track, to October, 134,000 New York State homeowners received notice that their banks are beginning foreclosure proceedings. Cuomo said one way he would minimize foreclosures as governor would be by scrutinizing servicers to prevent faulty ones. In response to the number of vacant and abandoned properties that the foreclosure crisis has left in many communities, Cuomo said he'd establish land trusts—innovative, publicly controlled legal entities that can acquire and maintain large areas of vacant land and manage their return to productive use.

Advocates who have been beating the drum about the problem of overleveraged apartment buildings—properties bought for exorbitant sums during the real estate boom by owners who thought they could jack up rents on low- and moderate-income tenants—praised Cuomo for including plans to use the power of the state mortgage insurance fund and bank-regulating entities to push lenders to write down the debt on such buildings.

But like nearly all the proposals in his "urban agenda," the role Cuomo envisioned for the state was primarily advisory or involved the application of influence, not the exercise of direct state government authority. In some areas—like federal tax credits—Albany has no direct power. But in others, Cuomo was simply silent about using authority the state might have: His blueprint, for instance, said nothing about Mitchell- Lama units being removed from the system or about protecting rent-stabilized tenants from harassment.