More than a decade of New York State governmental dysfunction has taken its toll on all of us. And now, faced with the greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression, the State Government is functionally bankrupt. For too long the State has lived far beyond its means, leading the nation in virtually every major category of public spending.

As the campaign season begins in earnest, New Yorkers owe it to themselves to demand their gubernatorial candidates answer two fundamental questions: "How have you defined your agenda to reform New York" and, the more difficult of the two, "How do you propose to get that agenda passed by the New York State Legislature?"

I answered the first question when I announced my campaign in May, by issuing a comprehensive 250-page policy book called the "New NY Agenda". There, I lay-out a realistic prescription drawn from a diagnosis of the State's dire fiscal situation. We need to clean up Albany, get our fiscal house in order, and make New York the jobs capital of the nation. We need dramatic ethics reform, a property tax and a spending cap to introduce fiscal discipline, and a jobs stimulus plan.