In the weeks since, Ms. Miner has gone from a simple position of power in Democratic ranks — she serves as the state party’s co-chairwoman, a position Mr. Cuomo picked her for — to a more complex role: equal parts hometown hero and the de facto leader of a wider movement to advocate for suffering cities, both upstate and elsewhere. The region faces a multitude of problems: declining or stagnant population growth, faltering economies, pension and debt woes, as well as a political concern — what Ms. Miner and others see as the inability of a series of governors to confront the situation.

“She had no interest in getting into a fight with the governor,” said Richard Ravitch, a former lieutenant governor and a friend and mentor of Ms. Miner. “But she found herself as the only one who was willing to say, ‘Hey, let’s sit down and figure out what the long-term answer is.’ ”

After Mr. Cuomo said in a January speech that the answer for struggling municipalities could not be to come to the state asking for a check, Ms. Miner objected, saying that there needed to be a more comprehensive approach to helping cities. And she wrote an articlepublished on the Op-Ed page of The New York Times on Feb. 14 that criticized the governor’s proposal to allow local governments to defer a portion of their pension costs by choosing a fixed contribution rate below a higher current one. She accused the governor of avoiding reality and lacking leadership, and likened his proposal to policies “that plunged New York City into a fiscal crisis in the mid-1970s.”

The criticism continued last month, after Mr. Cuomo and legislative leaders in Albany agreed to a plan, supported by the state comptroller, Thomas P. DiNapoli, that modifies an existing program that permits public employers in the short term to contribute less into pension funds, though they would be required to put money into reserve funds once deferred payments are eventually made.

Still, Ms. Miner was not impressed.

“It is another way to kick the can down the road,” she said. “It will have no appreciable impact on the oncoming fiscal crisis facing our cities and, in fact, will add to the crisis in the end.”

The governor and the mayor have not met since his budget was introduced in late January and Ms. Miner spoke out. But Ms. Miner has not been punished for her outspokenness; she has remained in her leadership role with the state party.

Asked about Ms. Miner’s critiques, Matthew Wing, a spokesman for the governor, said only that Mr. Cuomo “has enacted more mandate relief for local governments and schools than any administration in decades.”

Ms. Miner’s rhetoric and public criticism of the governor have raised questions about her ambitions. But she says she was simply seeking to attract attention to the fiscal woes of cities like her own.

Read the entire NYTimes article – http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/02/nyregion/for-syracuse-mayor-stephanie-a-miner-criticism-of-cuomo-raises-profile.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0