In a short article in The New York Times, you'll find a snapshot of New York State's biggest challenge: the withering of an entire region, upstate New York, by a slow process of industrial decline, economic stagnation and, flowing from that, population loss.

Buffalo, the state’s second-largest city, lost 16,114 residents, or 6 percent of its population. Rochester, the third-largest city, lost 10,352 residents, or 5 percent. Yonkers, the fourth-largest city, grew by 1 percent, or 1,524 residents. Syracuse, the fifth-largest city, lost 5,574 residents, or 4 percent.

That kind of population loss normally occurs only in wartime. By way of illustration: if New York City had lost six percent of its population of eight million since 2000, that would work out to a bit less than half a million, a catastrophic loss. That's what's happening upstate.

In contrast to Buffalo and Rochester, the City and its vast suburban belt are flourishing:

In absolute terms, New York City had the largest growth of any community in the state, gaining 196,076 residents, or 2 percent, between 2000 and 2006. (The Census Bureau estimates that the city has 8.2 million people, but city officials plan to protest that estimate, as they have in the past, saying it is too low.)

The disparity between the fortunes of upstate and downstate illustrates the central dilemma of the political status quo in the state: that, while our regulatory and taxation environment is without doubt in need of an overhaul, it is not the determining or sole factor of upstate's decline, and therefore can't be the sole policy focus if that decline is to be arrested and reversed. However, that is the sole ideologically acceptable remedy to the republican representatives of upstate New York in the State Legislature.

The state government in Albany is, of course, a case study of lamentable dysfunction and gridlock. That's infuriating in its own right. But it also illustrates the challenges inherent to doing anything to reverse the slow slide of more than two thirds of the state into a growing and encompassing senescence. Take, for example, the Brodsky Telecom Bill. It provides for a build-out of broadband online access to 85% of the state. In practice, that means that almost every New Yorker will have affordable, always-on high-speed internet access. In and of itself, that's not a sufficient policy solution to reverse the decline of upstate - it is, however, a necessary requirement for any kind of economic revitalization. The bill, of course, is lost somewhere in the maze of gridlocked Albany interests.

It's not an exaggeration to say that upstate New York is in crisis. Part and parcel of that crisis is this: our state government is not equipped, structurally and functionally, to solve it. The republicans in the Assembly have no power; those in the Senate do, but they're using it to push policy approaches that have demonstrably failed, nationwide and more dramatically at the state level. Look around Buffalo and its suburbs if you doubt that assessment. Go to Cattaraugus, see it for yourself. A hands-off, let's-just-talk-about-tax-cuts, laissez-faire policy isn't going to reverse what's happening in Rochester. Nor, for that matter, are capricious member items applied like so many band-aids to pet constituencies with a boo-boo.

Instead, what's needed at a minimum is this: infrastructure investments like the Brodsky Bill, a solution to the legislative gridlock in Albany, some new approaches on the huge cost factor that is health care, and most importantly, please, an end to that bizarre idea that there is a permanent divide between the interests of the City and the rest of the state. There isn't. The withering of upstate costs City folks real money, not least because of the transfer payments that need to be made every year, to the tune of ten billion or more, and by a loss in influence as our state Congressional delegation shrinks further after the next census. We used to have 45 Members; now, we have 29; after 2010, we'll probably have 27, if we're lucky, 28. Nobody in Manhattan or Nassau should think that this wastage doesn't directly and negatively affect them.

New Yorkers get engaged in the most obscure causes half a world away; shouldn't we have a compelling and substantial interest in the fortunes of our fellow New Yorkers right on our doorstep? Upstate New York does not require the City's, or Albany's, pity or alms; it needs, it has a right to expect, our active interest and, yes, our solidarity.

There is no inherent reason why upstate should wither. It is surrounded by flourishing economies on all sides; Ontario to the north, New England to the East, New York City to the south. It has a large and ingenious population. It has low real estate prices. It could potentially be the most wired place on earth, if the Brodsky Bill passes. It is surrounded by huge markets. It even has abundant hydroelectric power (and a hook-up to global shipping routes) from the Saint Lawrence. All the basic ingredients for a vital, dynamic, competitive region are there.

What's required to fix this is some leadership to step up and say that yes, there is a crisis. It's the same broader crisis of post-industrial decline that gave us the word Rust Belt. That crisis is colliding head-on with a similar crisis of legislative dysfunction in Albany. There is a direct link between the simple fact that legislators in Albany can't do simple things like hold hearings without leadership approval and this crisis: the conveyor belt of opinions between individual districts and the capital is broken. Silver and Bruno are bottlenecks - they can't, even if they had the best of intentions, control and channel that flow of information as well as can empowered individual legislators working for their constituents. Nor can upstate republicans, trapped as they are within their Reaganite ideology layered with pork-barrel spending, devise constructive, active approaches.

The depth and gravamen of the upstate crisis requires more than Albany is currently equipped to deliver. We can see that in the current petulant resistance of Senate republicans to passing Governor Spitzer's agenda. The fact that Joe Bruno is playing these games shows the leadership vacuum at its most glaring. Nor is Sheldon Silver's Assembly innocent in this.

We need new approaches to fixing upstate. Whether those will be forthcoming is, and has been for decades, an open question. Now, we're seeing population losses comparable to those in times of war. Time may very well be running out.

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