In a victory for The Business Council, Governor Eliot Spitzer
has signed legislation to renew the state's Power for Jobs
program.
The Power Authority program, part of a series of economic
development power programs, would have expired June 30 without
action from state lawmakers
After The Business Council raised strong objections to
the idea, Governor Spitzer vetoed a bill, S. 4565, that
would have prohibited employers from using employee Social
Security numbers for identity purposes.
“While we believe that the sponsors' intent was to
address a specific privacy concern, this bill imposes broad,
unworkable restrictions on the state's business community,”
Business Council President and CEO Kenneth Adams wrote in
a June 28 letter to the Governor
New
York State needs to substantially increase its electricity-generating
capacity, and state lawmakers should return to Albany as soon
as possible to seek a compromise on a new law to expedite
the siting of power plants, Business Council President Kenneth
Adams argued in a July 12 op-ed in the Albany Times Union
Millennium Pipeline Company has begun building a 182-mile-long,
30-inch-diameter buried natural gas pipeline across New
York's Southern Tier and lower Hudson Valley.
The project will be constructed over the next two years,
with some restoration work extending into 2009
ALBANY—New York State lost a net 225,000 residents in moves to
and from other states during the year ending in July 2006, according to
new Census data. The losses amount to 12 persons for every thousand New
Yorkers, and the total exceeds the population of New York's third-largest
city, Rochester
After
strong advocacy by The Business Council, chambers and other
allies, the Legislature moved towards the end of its regular
session by extending the Power for Jobs program for another
year, and by laying aside a number of anti-employer bills,
including paid family leave, pre-judgment interest in tort
claims, and restrictions on pharmaceutical marketing
Proposals in Albany aimed at
cracking down on pharmaceutical
companies' “gifts” to
doctors would undermine the
quality of health care and damage
the state's
economy, Business Council President
and CEO Kenneth Adams wrote
in an op-ed for the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle
The Business Council has launched a new Web-based electronic-advocacy
campaign to show lawmakers the statewide opposition to paid
family leave proposals.
The initiative enables business owners and others to send
letters to elected officials voicing concerns about the
impact paid family leave proposals would have on New York
businesses and asking lawmakers to oppose such proposals
Modest
reforms to the Wicks Law that are being discussed in Albany
represent "a step in the right direction," but provisions
of the proposed law may negate savings, and additional reforms
are clearly needed, especially Upstate, according to Business
Council President Kenneth Adams
Paul
Speranza, vice chairman, general counsel and secretary for
Wegmans Food Markets Inc. and vice chairman of finance on
The Business Council's Board of Directors, has been elected
chairman of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce