ALBANY — Governor Spitzer reached out to political opponents, created a powerful commission to study a long-sought cap on local school spending, and recommended free public college tuition for returning combat veterans today, according to prepared remarks of his State of the State speech.

“Join me in good faith,” Mr. Spitzer told the Legislature. “I will meet you with an open hand, an open door, and an open mind. For we will realize this opportunity best if we work together in a spirit of cooperation.”

RELATED: Text of the Speech

Mr. Spitzer named the Nassau County executive, Tom Suozzi, his Democratic primary opponent from 2006, to head a bipartisan commission to study the long politically unpopular option of capping local school and government spending. Although advised by economists for decades as a critical way to reduce New Yorker’s nation leading tax burden, Albany politicians have avoided the mandate on local communities and instead provided billions of dollars in relief without requiring that it directly reduce tax bills.

“Experience has taught us that we need stronger medicine,” Mr. Spitzer said. “A rebate check may temporarily ease the pain, but it doesn’t cure the disease. In the end, it’s a losing game for the taxpayer if the state gives you a rebate check on Monday and then on Tuesday your local government taxes it away.”

He called a spending cap “a blunt instrument, but it forces hard choices and discipline when nothing else works.”

The commission, with the power to subpoena records and compel testimony, would examine the state’s unfunded mandates primarily on schools outside New York City, find ways to cut costs in school instruction, and make tax relief more effective for middle class families. The other large city school districts of Yonkers, Syracuse, Rochester, and Buffalo, which are run by city governments and depend only partly on property taxes, could see separate caps or no cap at all, Mr. Spitzer’s director of state operations, Paul Francis, said.

Mr. Francis said school taxes have grown 7.3% a year for five years despite billions in state tax relief.

Mr. Spitzer, who fought bitterly at times with Mr. Suozzi in the governor’s race, called the Long Island Democrat a champion of lower taxes.

Mr. Spitzer also specifically thanked the Senate Republican leader, Joseph Bruno, with whom the governor has fought since June; a Republican senator of western New York, George Maziarz, Mayor Bloomberg, and several Democrats. Mr. Spitzer will credit them for accomplishments in his first tumultuous year.

Mr. Spitzer began the speech to the joint session of the Legislature with a moment of silence for Mr. Bruno’s wife, Barbara “Bobbie” Bruno, who died Monday. She and Mr. Bruno were married 57 years. The 78-year-old Senate majority leader wasn’t expected to attend the annual speech because of his wife’s death.

“Last year, although our differences often attracted more attention than our agreements, we came together to produce real change where progress had eluded the state for years,” Mr. Spitzer said in his prepared remarks. “These, all of them, are shared accomplishments. All New Yorkers will benefit from them, and I thank you.”

In the midst of the usual State of the State calls for bipartisanship, a Long Island Republican senator, Dean Skelos, noted that the “number one job” of the Senate’s GOP majority continues to be acting as a check on the governor, “not to blindly follow the executive.”

The annual speech is about ideas. The hard choices Mr. Spitzer calls for will begin January 22, when he proposes his second budget to the Legislature. That will have deal with a $4.3 billion deficit, and declining revenues because of a slowing economy. Mr. Spitzer will also still have to deal with lawmakers, including some Democrats and all in an election year, still stinging from his first year when he targeted them as part of Albany’s status quo that needs changing.

Messrs. Spitzer and Bruno have promised no tax increases, but are expected to rely on raising fees and Mr. Spitzer may close what he considers tax loopholes in business taxes to raise revenue.