I served as secretary to the Gov. Andrew Cuomo and as his chief of staff in the state attorney general's office. Since leaving the administration, the question I am asked most frequently is: Do you miss it?
Most days I am content to have returned to the private sector. Government work is long hours with minimal pay, and serving the state while living in New York City with three kids made my five years a challenge. But then there are days like Jan. 15 — the day the governor achieved the passage of the New York Secure Ammunition and Firearms Act.
The promise of good government is that it will improve the lives of its citizens. The promise made by elected officials is that they will fight to make good government a reality. Too often, these promises remain either unrealized or are simply — if not cynically — ignored.
I am proud that my best days working in the Cuomo administration involved making those promises a reality. We did this by pursuing legislation, policies and legal cases that at times seemed quixotic but were vitally important to real people. Instead of assuming we were doomed to fail, we were pushed to figure out ways to succeed.
As a result, in the attorney general's office, we pursued an all-but-abandoned case involving the corruption of the state comptroller's office and ended up with pleas of guilty from Alan Hevesi, Hank Morris and other corrupt political officials.
During our first weeks in the governor's office, we revealed that the budget process was a sham, rife with deceptive practices, and managed to close a $10 billion dollar deficit, deliver an on-time budget for the first time in a generation and alter the very process by which New York's budget is calculated.
And, despite warnings that we were doomed to fail, that no Republican would support us, and that we risked tainting the success of our first legislative session, we pursued and passed the Marriage Equality Act.
I thought of all of this as I watched the governor and his team achieve the passage of the SAFE Act. This legislation will save lives, and it is long overdue. The law strikes a common-sense balance. It helps keep guns out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill, bans assault weapons (and requires owners to register any currently legally owned assault weapons) and requires universal background checks on all sales of guns and ammunition. There is no reason that legitimate gun owners should be fazed or disturbed by these new procedures.
When we passed marriage equality, there was a real sense that the progressive middle had won the day and that New York was able to serve as a model for the nation. I had a similar sense as I watched the passage of the SAFE Act. It was a triumph of good government over extremism on both sides of the political spectrum.
Notably, in the state Assembly, the vote was 104 to 43; in the state Senate, the vote was 43 to 18. Eighteen Republicans voted in favor of the legislation.
We live in a time when most people complain that government fails to perform and that politicians refuse to take risks and lead. In passing the SAFE Act, both the governor and the Legislature lived up to the promise of good government. Those involved expended political capital and personal popularity.
As a consequence, I have no doubt that in the wake of the vote the governor's poll numbers will drop — as they did after the gay marriage vote. The opposition to gun reform is very real and very loud. But real leadership is about tackling tough problems, embracing challenges and taking risks, especially when it comes at a political cost.
With the SAFE Act, the governor and his administration showed that leadership matters, and that government can live up to its promise. It also reminded me that some days, I really do miss government service.
Steven M. Cohen is the former secretary to Gov. Andrew Cuomo and was counselor and chief of staff when Cuomo was the state attorney general.