The following is part of an editorial in today’s Rochester Democrat and Chronicle.

“At a time when New York can use all of the savings it can get, legislators in Albany continue to ignore desperately needed reforms in the state’s legal system.

Granted, it’s a pipe dream to believe lawmakers will act during the current special session, but now’s a good time to put legal reforms on their 2010 legislative agenda.

Specifically, New York must do something about the high cost of lawsuits and high-tort litigation risks. They’re costing taxpayers millions of dollars in higher taxes and increased costs for goods, insurance and health care.

Those were the findings in a new study conducted by Pacific Research Institute, a nationally known research firm, which also concluded that New York’s legal system is the third worst in the nation.”

To read the rest of the editorial click here.

Two New York City daily newspaper editorial boards oppose wage mandates for projects built with Industrial Development Agency (IDA) assistance.

Both The New York Post and The New York Daily News editorials agree with The Business Council of New York State that these mandates would kill jobs.

The Post writes:  “Gov. Paterson’s poll ratings may be poor, but that’s no reason for him to try to buy union support with a bill that would destroy jobs.

Alas, that seems to be his thinking in promoting legislation to force developers and landlords at state-assisted projects to pay workers, essentially, union scale.

Salaries at such projects would have to be in line with “prevailing wages” — i.e., union wages. In New York City, that would be a hefty $19.20 an hour — nearly three times the $7.25 minimum wage.

And, again, the bill would cover not just construction workers on a project but also a landlord’s workers far into the future — including “guards, doormen, building cleaners, porters, handymen, janitors, groundskeepers, elevator operators and collectors of garbage.”

Leave no worker behind, it seems, in terms of pay — even if it means leaving far too many of them behind when it comes to jobs.

That’s right: In one fell swoop, the bill would make many projects uneconomical — even with the state assistance (which usually covers just a small portion of the costs, anyway).”

Read the editorial.

The Daily News writes: “There may be no place on the planet that generates more noble-sounding but awful ideas than Albany. In the latest, Gov. Paterson and the Legislature would attempt to repeal the laws of economics.

At the behest of politically powerful SEIU 32BJ, the union for building service workers, the officials are considering imposing wage mandates on projects that get economic development incentives to create jobs.

To qualify for benefits such as low-interest loans and tax breaks, construction firms would be obliged to pay based on local union contracts - which generally call for higher wages than nonunion workers make.

Similarly, building management companies would have to provide doormen, custodians and other workers with prevailing wages based on the 32BJ contract. Finally, all employers that occupy the building would have to pay at least $19.20 an hour in New York City - almost three times the normal minimum wage.”

Read the editorial.

“Why — in the middle of the worst crisis since the Great Depression — would the governor want to kill an economic development program that has created over 200,000 new jobs?” said Kenneth Adams, the president of the Business Council of New York State in a New York Times article. “It’s a proposal that destroys hope for economic recovery in New York.”

Read the article.

Judy Rife of the Times Herald-Record provides an update on the new MTA chairman and how he is dealing with the fallout from the MTA payroll tax.

“The Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s new chairman and CEO will attempt a charm offensive Tuesday in a Hudson Valley that tends to define “payroll tax” in X-rated terms.

Jay Walder, a native of Queens who returned home from London to run the agency where he got his first job in public transportation, will have breakfast in Fishkill, coffee in New Windsor and lunch in Sparkill with hundreds of the region’s business leaders.

“It’s a good first step,” said Carol Smith, vice president of the Orange County Chamber of Commerce, of Walder’s outreach. “He obviously knows that we feel neglected, that we feel we haven’t been heard.”

Read the rest of the story click here.

Tom Wilber writes in the Star Gazette about today’s Marcellus Shale summit being held at the Owego Treadway Inn.

“It’s hard to get environmental advocates and natural gas industry officials together in one room, let alone on the same panel.

Both of those things are scheduled to happen Monday, when Cornell Cooperative Extension will hold a summit on Marcellus Shale development in the Southern Tier. The massive geological formation, running under the Southern Tier and throughout Pennsylvania, holds the largest natural gas resource in the country. Its full-scale development carries the prospects of significant changes to the region’s landscape and economy.

Regulators, geologists, lawyers, emergency responders, landowners, municipal officials, economic developers and other stakeholders are scheduled to meet at the Owego Treadway Inn for a daylong summit on the impact of Marcellus development. The event, open to the public, will begin at 9 a.m., with registration at 8:15 a.m.

“There are many different perspectives to this and we are trying to present them all,” said Andy Fagan, director of Cornell Cooperative Extension offices covering Tioga and Chemung counties”

To read the rest of the story click here.

The Business Council of New York State, Inc. has strongly supported a number of fiscal reforms to lower state spending and taxes.

In an opinion piece in The Albany Times Union, John Faso lays out the case for reform and what needs to be done.

He writes: “Many New Yorkers are in for a surprise. State government is running out of money and soon won’t be able to pay all its bills. State tax revenues are forecast to be $20 billion lower than projected spending over the next 21/2 years.

How did we get here?

For one thing, the private sector economy has been declining, particularly in upstate New York. State coffers were filled by taxes generated by the financial services industry in New York City. Since the real estate and stock market bubble burst in 2008, state revenues have precipitously declined.

Meanwhile, nothing has been done by Albany to lower the cost of state and local government in recognition of the severe private-sector economic recession.”

He details a six-point plan to fix the problem including a fiscal emergency to freeze state and local government salaries, a new less generous pension tier for new government employees and a property tax cap. These are reforms The Business Council supports.

John Faso was the 2006 Republican candidate for governor and a former state Assembly minority leader. He is a partner in the law firm of Manatt Phelps and Phillips LLP

Read the rest of the column.

Charley Hannagan of the Syracuse Post-Standard writes - “There are about six job seekers for every job opening in the Syracuse metropolitan area.

That sounds discouraging until you look at the data from Juju.com, a job search Web site that measured job competition and then compared metropolitan areas across the country.

In its ranking, Syracuse comes in at about the middle of the pack, between Seattle and San Francisco.

The Web site ranked job competition for 50 major cities. It found that Washington, D.C., has the least competition, with two job seekers for each open position. Detroit has the most, according to the group, with 21 job seekers per open position.

The Web site came up with its rankings by taking the number of people listed as unemployed by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, and divided it by the number job openings. The result is Syracuse has 6.22 job seekers for every job opening.”

To read the rest of the story click here.

The following is part of an op-ed by Mark Kriss, the executive director of Albany-based New Yorkers for Lawsuit Reform.
that appeared in the Rochester Democrat and Cronicle this weekend.

“We’ve all read and laughed at the stories of ludicrous lawsuits and the runaway juries who decide on multi-million judgments.

Unfortunately, fellow New Yorkers, the joke is on us.

A recent independent economic study conducted for New Yorkers for Lawsuit Reform — a statewide coalition of large and small businesses, medical professionals, municipal governments and other hardworking New Yorkers — has finally determined the actual cost of New York’s legal system to all of us. And, that cost is enormous.

The study, conducted by the prestigious Pacific Research Institute, found that New York’s legal system ranks 48th in our country for its expense and bias towards trial lawyers. What that means to us is:
Businesses — and jobs — are leaving New York state in droves. A recent study found that a state’s “tort climate” is the second most important factor for businesses when looking to locate. Ranking third worst in the nation is bad news.”

Read the rest of the op-ed click here.

Cara Matthews reports on today’s Pressconnects.com - “Gov. David Paterson said Sunday that he would act unilaterally to close $1.6 billion of the approximately $3.2 billion budget gap, and he urged the Legislature to reach an agreement on a deficit-reduction plan for the balance as soon as possible.

Negotiations with the Senate and Assembly over the holiday weekend had not led to any agreements or new proposals on how to remedy the problem, Paterson said during a conference call with reporters Sunday afternoon.

The governor indicated that the administration is having more difficulty with the Senate than the Assembly in addressing the state’s “fiscal emergency.”

“I have been trying at this point to make this a three-way agreement. I have been trying to work with them and continue to negotiate with them. The Senate in particular does not know that we’ve run out of time,” he said.”

Read the rest of the story click here.

The Rochester Democrat & Chronicle writes in an editorial that it is not enough for the state legislature to simply say no to proposals to balance the state budget.

The paper writes:  “Despite the heavy odds against getting his way, at least Gov. David Paterson isn’t throwing up his hands in frustration with irresponsible state lawmakers. He wisely continues to try to find ways to force their hands.

Paterson on Tuesday presented the Legislature with two formal proposals to stop the state’s fiscal hemorrhaging.

The measures are in response to three weeks of dillydallying by lawmakers called into special session to close the state’s budget deficit of at least $3.2 billion.”

It conludes:  “It’s simply foolish to let New York follow 34 states forced to make drastic cutbacks in recent weeks. Along with the oft-stated downsides, if New York keeps swimming in red ink, its credit rating will continue to go down. That means higher taxpayer-paid interest rates.

Unlike Albany lawmakers, the governor has reasonable plans for moving forward. Taxpayers can’t afford for legislators to continue sitting around, doing nothing.”

Read the editorial.

The Buffalo News’ Tom Precious reports that Gov. David Paterson offered the legislature a watered down deficit reduction plan with fewer cuts and more reliance on federal bailout money. The Governor’s new plan also increase taxes on healthcare.

Even though this is a step away from the fiscal discipline the state needs and the Governor has asked for he got no takers in the legislature.

Precious writes:  “Gov. David A. Paterson on Tuesday proposed a new set of deficit-closing ideas with far less drastic reductions in aid to public schools and more reliance on federal bailout money.

And in a bit of a mixed message, he also urged lawmakers to grant him unprecedented emergency powers to cut the budget on his own — an idea that won no support in the State Legislature.

In the end, no decisions were made. Lawmakers rejected Paterson’s more modest round of proposed cuts and went home for the Thanksgiving holiday with plans to not return until Monday, when they will try — for the fourth week in a row — to erase the state’s $3.2 billion deficit.

The governor’s new budget proposal is somewhat different from an earlier plan, relying more on one-shots — stopgap fiscal maneuvers that are widely derided. It also includes a sharp increase in assessments on inpatient hospital admissions that, eventually, get passed on to consumers, and comes despite vows from all sides that the deficit package will not include tax or fee increases.”

Read the story.