ALBANY -- The legislative session this year ended a week late, but it ended in extraordinary fashion: A property-tax cap and legalizing same-sex marriage were adopted on the same day.
And that followed lawmakers and Gov. Andrew Cuomo agreeing earlier this month to sweeping reforms to the state's ethics laws and the approval in March of the first on-time budget in six years -- and the first in more than a decade to cut spending.
In his first six months in office, the Democratic governor scored victories on all his legislative priorities, a remarkable feat at a state Capitol legendary for its rigidity, political analysts said.
"The governor hit a home run in his first session," said Steven Greenberg, a pollster for Siena College.
With his soaring popularity, Cuomo used a mix of hospitality, cajoling and a stern focus on his priorities to move a reluctant Legislature into adopting measures that had literally been collecting dust for decades.
A property-tax cap was first introduced in the mid-1990s, for example, and the state's law on siting power plants expired eight years ago. The state University of New York had long sought the ability to have regularly scheduled tuition increases.
All were approved by the Legislature in the past week at Cuomo's urging.
"He drove the agenda and pitched a shut out, item by item," said Marist College pollster Lee Miringoff. "He stuck very close to his campaign message. He said what he was going to do, and people would be hard pressed to see where he came up short."
After taking a tough fiscally conservative approach to the budget, Cuomo sought to win back progressive Democrats by expanding rent laws for New York City and its suburbs and pulling together enough votes to pass same-sex marriage in the Senate. After failing in 2009, the gay marriage bill passed the Senate on Friday night with 33 votes, one more than necessary.
"We really did deliver on the agenda, and I truly believe this state is on a different trajectory than it was six months ago," Cuomo told reporters Friday night.
Cuomo's work, however, is far from over. And some groups didn't leave the Capitol on Friday as gleeful as Cuomo.
Schools and local governments warn of troubled times because of the property-tax cap, which will limit the growth in taxes to 2 percent a year or the rate of inflation, whichever is lower. And while lawmakers and Cuomo agreed to some reforms to state-mandated programs pushed down to municipalities, most local officials said it didn't go far enough.
"By enacting a tax cap without meaningful mandate relief, New York has missed an historic opportunity to provide real and sustainable property-tax relief," said Peter Baynes, executive director of the state Conference of Mayors.
He called the mandate relief approved "meager and anemic."
Celicia Absher, member of the New York State Coalition for Local Control and a former school board president in Mamaroneck, Westchester County, said the tax cap "would devastate the public education system in New York state in just a few years."
Others disagree.
E.J. McMahon, senior fellow of the conservative Empire Center For New York State Policy, hailed the tax cap. Taxpayers and businesses have been burdened by having among the highest property taxes in the nation.
An important part of the cap would prohibit a school district from raising taxes at all if voters rejected the budget twice. Currently, a twice-rejected budget leads to a contingency spending plan that has a fixed tax hike, sometimes as high as what voters shot down.
"It's a significant accomplishment," McMahon said. "It's a potential game changer, particularly the school part because it significantly changes the nature of the school-budget vote."
What also pleased McMahon and other fiscal conservatives is that Cuomo indicated Friday he would veto a deal for schools passed last week by the Legislature. The bill would let schools borrow to pay for burgeoning pension costs - a move that would lead to future fiscal troubles, opponents argued.
Cuomo solved much of the state's own fiscal troubles in March. The 2011-12 budget, which runs through March 31, cut spending and essentially wiped out most of the state's future budget gaps. In an unprecedented move, Cuomo also got the Legislature to agree for the subsequent year to raise spending for health care and schools by about 4 percent - essentially erasing the debate next year on the two most contentious areas of spending.
"The most significant thing was they got the budget done and they did a good budget, one that will help the future because they did some spending cuts," said Elizabeth Lynam, deputy research director for the business-backed Citizens Budget Commission.
But the next six months may also prove critical for Cuomo, particularly for the upstate economy.
Cuomo's top economic-development initiative to establish regional development councils across the state has yet to form.
He's still wrangling with a series of union contracts that expired last April that could lead to 9,800 state layoffs. That process gained a huge boost Wednesday when he struck a tentative deal to avoid layoffs with the state's largest union, the Civil Service Employees Association.
Cuomo is also expected this summer to announce the closure of perhaps six prisons as he looks to eliminate 3,700 empty beds.
Meanwhile, a deal to set up a health-care exchange to comply with the federal Affordable Care Act wasn't finished in the final days of the session, when Senate Republicans balked. The state risks losing federal aid if a deal isn't struck soon.
The deal to establish a new ethics panel to contend with potential corruption in the executive and legislative branches will face major scrutiny, and Cuomo has been criticized for stacking boards and commissions with major campaign donors.
Susan Lerner, executive director of Common Cause, said Cuomo had many gains, but they could have been stronger if more deliberations were held in public. Deals were cut behind closed doors.
"We think it's a good start in the right direction," she said. "Imagine if they were having these discussions in public. We'd probably have even stronger bills."
While Cuomo has changed the tenor in Albany and is widely popular, he'll need to keep rolling to dramatically alter the public's view of a state Capitol that for years was mired in scandal and ineffectiveness, Marist's Miringoff said.
Governors often have strong first years, but the key is sustaining it, he said.
"It will take more one than good session in Albany to repair the years of dysfunction and damage to the credibility that Albany has with voters in the state," Miringoff said.
Here's a look at many of the key issues during Gov. Andrew Cuomo's first six months in office:
-- Property-tax cap: The governor and the Legislature adopted a cap on the growth in property taxes to 2 percent a year.
-- Ethics reform: The deal requires greater disclosure of legislators' outside income and private business dealings. It establishes a new oversight board and give judges power to take away the pensions of lawmakers convicted of felonies.
-- Same-sex marriage: The Legislature on Friday, at Cuomo's strong urging, made New York the sixth state to legalize same-sex marriage.
-- Rent-control regulations: Rent-control laws for New York City and its suburbs, including Westchester and Rockland counties, were extended and expanded, although not enough for some tenant advocates.
-- Independent redistricting: Good-government groups want lawmakers to create an independent panel to draw new legislative district lines in 2012, but the effort has stalled.
-- SUNY tuition: New York's public colleges will get to raise tuition $300 a year for the next five years after being at the whim of the Legislature, which had to approve when to raise tuition.
-- Pension reform: Cuomo has floated a proposal to create a new, less generous pension for new public workers to limit retirement costs for state and local governments. But it didn't get approved.
-- Mandate relief: Local governments and schools wanted major reforms to costs forced on them by the state, such as Medicaid expenses. The Legislature and Cuomo agreed to some changes.
-- Hydrofracking: A report next month from the state Department of Environmental Conservation will outline the steps on how to contend with the natural-gas drilling, which is currently on hold. It'll be a major thorny issue for the Cuomo administration.
By JOSEPH SPECTOR Gannett Albany Bureau Chief