By Associated Press
Albany, NY – Governor Pataki's State of the State address Wednesday laid out out an ambitious agenda that includes plans to boost New York's employment situation and reform funding for the public school system.
Pataki called on the state Legislature to join him in an effort to create one million new jobs by the end of the decade.
The third-term governor also called for an overhaul of the state's education aid system, new tax breaks for business and a special effort to revitalize the state's faltering manufacturing sector.
The governor's speech also touched on an initiative to make state law enforcement resources available to local governments outside New York City to battle high crime rates.
That plan calls for making 300 state troopers available to municipalities that have seen a rise in violent crimes.
Here are highlights from the Governor's address:
-Create one million new private-sector jobs by the end of the decade.
-"Finally throw out" current state education aid distribution formulas and replace it with a simpler and fairer system.
-Exempt New York National Guard pay from state taxes and increase active duty pay for troops on the front lines of the war against terror.
-Pass legislation to give some 75,000 state and local law enforcement officials the same investigatory powers in terrorism cases as their federal counterparts.
-Create operation IMPACT, an effort to assign 300 state troopers to communities in 15 counties which account for 80 percent of the crimes committed in the state outside New York City.
-Increase penalties for drunken or dangerous drivers who get into accidents that kill or injure others.
-Push legislation to give violent felons life in prison if they murder a child in the course of committing a crime.
-Increase penalties for sex offenders who fail to comply with requirements under Megan's Law.
-See that big municipal construction projects get completed, such as the Destiny USA megamall in Syracuse, the Renaissance Center in Rochester, a new convention center in Albany and a BassPro sporting goods outlet in downtown Buffalo.
-Create a Manufacturing Assistance Program to steer research and development grant money to manufacturers and create new job-training assistance programs for manufacturers.
-Follow-up on successful high-tech research and business development by forming a High Tech Council to be headed by Dr. Harold Varmus, a Nobel Prize winner and CEO of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.
-Capitalize on the development of "clean" energy sources in a partnership between Cornell University, Syracuse University, the State University of New York's Environmental Science and Forestry school in Syracuse, state government and the private sector.
-Plant thousands of trees to make urban areas of the state "greener."
-Try to guarantee that every new school bus in New York runs on "clean" energy sources, such as natural gas.
-Open or expand 20 more state parks in the next five years.
-Ensure that by 2009, the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson's voyage up the Hudson River, that the river is swimmable from New York City to its source in the Adirondack Mountains.
-Improve health care for the elderly, especially home-based services for New Yorkers.
-Reduce state and local Medicaid expenses.
-Make more public aid available to building projects at private colleges and universities.
-Press efforts to rebuild lower Manhattan around the former World Trade Center towers site, including an appropriate memorial to honor those killed during the September Eleventh, 2001, terrorist attack.