This has been a truly exciting week for government reform in New York.  On Wednesday New York Governor Eliot Spitzer fresh off of his Monday inaugural address made his first State of the State address before a joint session of the New York State Senate and Assembly.  In his 6,000+ word speech Governor Spitzer laid out an ambitious agenda for his first year in office.  However, before he got to the tax cuts, education funding, and health care reform the new Governor laid out an ambitious and ground shattering array of government reforms.  First among them was a pledge "to replace the weakest campaign finance laws in the nation with the strongest."   Besides calling for lower limits, closing of loopholes and limiting contributions from lobbyists he also called for full public financing.

The Governor didn't stop with campaign finance reform he also called for lobbying, election, judicial selection, and several other key reforms that Common Cause and other good government groups have been advocating for decades.  I should have a clip of the government reform section posted on YouTube by tomorrow morning.

The good news doesn't end with Spitzer, however. More good news for reform in New York and Spitzer's full remarks on government reform after the jump....

Yesterday, as New York’s lawmakers began to scrutinize the failures that led to recent power outages in Western Queens and on Staten Island, Common Cause/NY released an analysis of the energy industry’s political spending.

Two weeks ago 100,000 Queens residents were plunged into a 10-day blackout. This week the New York City Council and the New York State Assembly are holding hearings on what went wrong. And today Mayor Bloomberg has already declared a heat emergency has New York City faces triple digit temperatures and the possibility of further large-scale blackouts.

Downloads, clips and more after the break...