He says Andrew Cuomo's choice of Rochester Mayor Robert Duffy as his running mate indicates he "has no stomach for reform."
Fayetteville, NY – Republican candidate for governor Rick Lazio ripped into Democratic rival during a campaign stop here, saying Andrew Cuomo’s choice of Rochester Mayor Robert Duffy as his running mate indicates he “has no stomach for reform.”
Lazio, in Fayetteville for a tour of O’Brien & Gere’s manufacturing facility at 555 E. Genesee St., reacted to a Wall Street Journal report that called Duffy a “double dipper” for drawing a $70,000 annual pension as a retired police officer while collecting a $127,694 yearly salary as mayor.
Cuomo has complained in the past that the practice is driving the state’s retirement costs too high.
“Once again it’s about Andrew Cuomo saying one thing and doing another,” Lazio told reporters during a post-tour news conference. “And this is what the voters and the public, the citizens of New York, are so disgusted with. They are distrustful of government because politicians continually seem like they say one thing and do another.”
What Duffy did is legal, but it sends the wrong signal to taxpayers struggling with job losses and cuts in pay and hours, Lazio said.
“You look at Andrew Cuomo and you gotta question whether or not, after doing something like this, he really had any stomach whatsoever for reform. And the answer, I think, is clearly no,” he said.
Lazio’s criticism drew return fire from Charlie King, executive director of the state Democratic Committee.
“Mayor Duffy has done everything by the book in an open and transparent way. He earns no pension as mayor and does not ‘double dip.’ Mayor Duffy earned his police pension by spending decades risking his life to protect his community,” King said in a prepared statement. See Capital Tonight's video of Bob Duffy responding to Rick Lazio.
“Instead of denigrating the service of those who have risked their lives serving in law enforcement, Lazio should explain why he refuses to make his tax returns available and detail the millions he made as Wall Street’s top lobbyist,” King said.
Lazio’s Fayetteville visit was part of a two-day, five-city Upstate tour of innovative small businesses and, in the case of Jamestown, a trip to see Chautauqua County’s system of harvesting methane from waste. Lazio’s running mate is Chautauqua County Executive Greg Edwards.
"We can’t take companies like (O’Brien & Gere) for granted, that they’re going to stay here,” Lazio said. "We need to have a governor and a government that respects them and partners with them so they can continue to grow these jobs.”
He said he would cut the state budget, proposing to reduce Medicaid costs by moving toward managed care and reducing emergency room visits for non-emergency care, and to consolidate agencies with similar missions, using the departments of Health and Mental Health as an example.
“There’s no doubt in my mind that we’re going to have to have a significant reduction in the size of the state work force,” Lazio said. “We can do that through attrition and hard hiring freezes or we can do that through layoffs, and I think the decision is going to be based in large part on whether unions are constructive and come forward and help us to achieve those savings without disrupting too many lives.”