The more things change...

Twenty-five years ago tomorrow, I reported for my first day at work at Gannett's Albany bureau after 10 years at the Rochester Times Union.

Biggest running story in the summer of 1984 was how, if at all, New York's popular new Democratic governor, Mario Cuomo, would figure in Democrats' attempt to oust former b-movie actor Ronald Reagan from the White House.

Just a few weeks later, I was in San Francisco to hear Cuomo deliver his poetic and passionate critique of the President's policies in his famous keynote address at the Democratic convention. There was talk briefly that the delegates would dump solid-but-boring Walter Mondale (Cuomo said the Minnesota senator was like "polenta,'' a plain but nurtitious Italian dish) for the flashy native of Queens. But nothing happened. Cuomo went back to running New York and Mondale got swamped.

For the first 22 years I was here, New York had only two governors, Cuomo for 10 and George Pataki for 12. The pace of new people serving as governor has picked up recently, as many of you have probably noticed.

State lawmakers, lobbyists, commisioners and others have come and gone, providing me along the way with fodder for among other things more than 1,000 columns (weekly from 1989 to this June 18) and multiple thousand news articles and one book.

While the personalities have changed, the basic issues - high taxes compared to other states and generally laggard economic growth - have remained the same, and in fact have intensified. Upstate has never been in worse shape. The the frequency of corruption seems to have picked up. The level of Sexual hijinks has stayed about the same.

In other words, I have been accorded all of these years a ringside seat to view the vivid, high-stakes collision of interests, ideas, power and money of a large and diverse state trying to regain its tarnished glory in a new world.

My hopes 25 years ago was that Albany would prove to be a big enough sandbox to keep me interested, while at the same time small enough for me to get my journalistic arms around it (unlike Washington). And also unlike Washington, it seemed to be a good place to raise a family, get around and live reasonably well on a reporter's salary.

I also thought it would be a fun place to be because most people have an interest in what happens at the Capitol, and most would want to talk about it, which is my idea of a good time.

It worked out on all of these levels.

In 2010 another Cuomo will probably take a shot at being elected governor, first having to get by the man currently sitting in the chair. Don't want to miss that.