The first of the DEC’s public hearings on hydraulic fracturing was held yesterday in Dansville, New York. To view YNN’s coverage of the meeting please click here.

On Oct. 6, Heather Briccetti, acting-president and CEO of The Business Council, testified at an Assembly hearing on the DEC’s revised draft SGEIS. The following statement was part of her testimony:

“Over the past two and a half years, the State of New York has engaged in one of the nation’s most complex and thorough reviews of one single process; the extraction of a natural resource. The Department of Environmental Conservation, under the leadership of two commissioners with strong environmental records, has investigated and planned for the high and low probability factors associated with natural gas drilling. It is time to move forward.”

The state of New York could save up to $4.3 billion in tort costs and create between 74,000 and 201,000 new jobs by improving its legal environment, according to a working paper released  by the U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform (ILR).

According to the report, if New York were to make improvements to its legal environment to the level of the report’s benchmark, the state could reduce tort costs by 21.2% ($4.3 billion) and potentially increase employment by between .84% and 2.27%, which translates to 74,000 and 201,000 new jobs.

The study uses various measures to determine each states legal environment, including the perceived fairness of the legal system, the concentration of lawyers in the state, the number of tort cases filed per year and the number of major verdicts in the state.  In the study, New York stood out from the other states having a disproportionately higher lawyer concentration.

This report is further proof that New York desperately needs lawsuit reform, ranking far above the majority of other states in each factor measured.  See the press release LRANY issued yesterday.

In testimony given today before the Assembly Standing Committee on Environmental Conservation, Heather Briccetti, acting-president and CEO of The Business Council of New York State, Inc. stressed the need for New York to move ahead with a balanced approach to development in the Marcellus Shale

As part of her testimony she stated, “Over the past two and a half years, the State of New York has engaged in one of the nation’s most complex and thorough reviews of one single process; the extraction of a natural resource. The Department of Environmental Conservation under the leadership of two Commissioners with strong environmental records have investigated and planned for the high and low probability factors associated with natural gas drilling. It is time to move forward.”

The Public Policy Institute, the research arm of The Business Council, recently released a report on Marcellus Shale development entitled Drilling for Jobs: What the Marcellus Shale could mean for New York.

To read more click here.

The Business Council’s Political Action Committee (PAC) will be holding a fall reception at The Sagamore Resort on beautiful Lake George on Wednesday, September 21.

Please click here to view the invitation: am-fall-reception-21

Please click here to register for The Business Council’s Annual Meeting.

The Marcellus Shale Coalition (MSC) points out the inaccuracy of recent media reports claiming that the U.S. was “slashing” its estimates on the amount of recoverable gas in the Marcellus Shale. The following is an excerpt from an MSC press release:

“CLAIMS: Citing Philip Budzik, an Energy Information Administration (EIA) bureaucrat who touts the work of anti-shale gas groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Bloomberg News claims new USGS data will cause “U.S. to Slash Marcellus Shale Gas Estimate 80%.”

“FACTS: USGS notes that “it’s important to do an apples-to-apples comparison here” – something Bloomberg News and the New York Times fundamentally failed to do. “Hold off on those shale gas obituaries,” accurately reports the Washington Post’s Brad Plumer.

• As it turns out, many of those stories may have been premature — and appear to be based on a slight misunderstanding of the USGS survey. … As Brenda Pierce, program coordinator for the USGS energy resources program told me, it’s important to do an apples-to-apples comparison here. The USGS and EIA aren’t measuring the same thing, exactly: The USGS offered an estimate of undiscovered resources that can be recovered with current technology, whereas the EIA report looked at both “active” and “undeveloped” reserves together. “Ours is additive to what’s already in production,” explains Pierce. … So the revision could end up being much less stark than early media reports implied. (Washington Post, 8/26/11)”

Please click here to read more.

Ken Lovett of the Daily News reports - “Gov. Cuomo and legislative leaders are close to a deal on a sweeping ethics reform plan designed to clean up the state Capitol.

“This has the potential to be a very comprehensive and far-reaching ethics package,” said Citizen Union’s Richard Dadey.

The long-anticipated bill, which was still being negotiated Wednesday, would require lawmakers to publicly disclose for the first time their outside income, sources said.

It also would require legislators who are lawyers to make public any clients with state business, they said.

Still being discussed is a Senate GOP push to have the state compile a list of all law firms that have clients with state business, whether they employ a legislator or not.”

To read more click here.

The Business Council opposes this legislation which would institute a standard of “joint and several liability” for any damages resulting from operations, exploration, extraction or transportation activity relating to natural gas exploration. Liability for such incidents would extend to landowners entering into leases for natural gas exploration.

Under existing law damages can be recovered from drillers and landowners who have allowed drilling on their property when it is proven that the damage was caused by the negligent conduct of the driller or landowner. If enacted into law, this bill would allow for damages just based on a causal connection between the drilling and the related activity.

This would no longer incentivize landowners’ willingness to lease lands for natural gas development. A land owner would be just as responsible for any adverse incident relating to a natural gas well as any company or other party. The benefits of natural gas development would be lost to the potential flood of lawsuits this absolute liability standard would bring.

To read the rest of the bill memo click here.

Michael Gormley of the Associated Press reports -”A classic Albany deal is in the works that could protect 1 million New York City renters from big rent increases while also capping the growth in property taxes in the suburbs and upstate.

The Assembly, led by New York City Democrats, planned to pass its measure on Monday to strengthen and expand protections for people living in rent-controlled apartments, mostly in New York City.

The Senate, led by suburban Republicans, has already passed a bill proposed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo that would cap the growth of property taxes at 2 percent a year.

Advocates on all sides of each issue are scrambling to stop efforts to weaken the major bills in closed-door negotiations. That includes proposals to amend Cuomo’s property tax cap bill by allowing the annual tax rate to rise as much as 4 percent, with more expenses added to a list that could allow a local school board to suspend the cap.”

TO read more click here.

According to a Siena College poll released today - “By a nearly four-to-one margin, 78-20 percent, voters want any teacher layoffs to be based on an evaluation of the teachers’ performance in the classroom and not based on seniority,” Steve Greenberg said. “Voters are clear and strong in their belief that LIFO must go despite teachers’ union support and any concern over arbitrary firings. At least 70 percent of every demographic group, with only one exception, says teacher performance is the criteria that should be used for layoffs. The exception is union households, where voters still favor performance over seniority by a commanding 65-34 percent margin.”

To read more poll results click here.

“The labor-backed Fiscal Policy Institute’s (FPI) examination of “tax expenditures” seems to conclude that New York would be better off with even higher taxes on its employers. Nothing could be further from the truth,” said Kenneth Adams, president and CEO of The Business Council of New York State. “In New York state low taxes are not the problem.”

The Business Council pointed out that state and local taxes on business amount to $56 billion, second only to California and more than Texas by $3 billion and 64 percent above fourth place Florida, according to the Conference of State Taxation/Ernst & Young 2009 State Tax Climate Report.Total state and local business taxes in New York are 5.5 percent of gross state product, almost 20 percent above the national average, according the same report.

To read more of The Business Council’s statement click here.