The New York Adjutant General's Message

I am honored to be selected by Gov. David Paterson to serve as the Adjutant General of New York. Major General Joseph Taluto has been a mentor to me and an outstanding leader. He has set the New York Military Forces up for success.

It is my job to continue that trend.

Our Army Guard forces have come from far below assigned strength to 100 percent strength. Equipment that went to war has been replaced or refurbished. We have developed great programs to look after our families and we have a great capability for domestic emergency response.

The health of our organization is as good as it has been in a long time. My first priority will be to maintain our strength. We have more than 16,000 men and women in the Army and Air National Guard and those numbers are important. We must continually refill our units so that as we deploy overseas we can respond to domestic emergencies.

My second priority will be caring for families. Our Guard families face stress as we deploy Soldiers and Airmen into and out of war zones and face demanding training here. We want to provide support through access to veterans programs, unit family readiness organizations and our Yellow Ribbon program.

Third, our units must have enough equipment. This is vital to train for deployments overseas and for domestic responses for fire, floods, or terrorist attacks.

We have many challenges facing us.

The 27th Infantry Brigade Combat Team is expected to deploy to Afghanistan in late 2011 or early 2012 and our Air Guard members will continue to deploy regularly worldwide. We must hone our domestic operations capability, our Naval Militia and New York Guard forces will be called upon in this arena.

The leadership on the fourth floor of the Division of Military and Naval Affairs building has changed, but the men and women of our organization are the same. I will empower the staff and our unit leaders to do their jobs and execute their missions.

I am proud to represent and lead you, the men and women I serve with every day and I am proud to be part of the New York National Guard.

Read the TAG's Biography