The Pataki administration
Wednesday proposed changes to auto insurance in New York designed to fight
fraud and cut auto insurance premiums.
The legislative
and regulatory package includes an executive order from the Governor
naming the Attorney General special prosecutor to coordinate state-level
investigatory and prosecutorial efforts to fight fraud
Senate Majority Leader Joseph
Bruno Wednesday convened a meeting of the Joint Legislative Budget General
Conference Committee and renewed his call for $2.2 billion in new tax cuts.
No Senate or Assembly Democrats
on the conference committee attended the meeting.
The Senate's package won
approval of the Senate Finance Committee Wednesday
For the complete tables showing proposed tax and spending increases in
individual school districts in New York State.
ALBANY, N.Y.School
budgets appearing on ballots across New York State next week would increase
property taxes by twice the projected rate of inflation, a new "School Tax
Watch" study by The Public Policy Institute finds
The Senate majority has proposed
a $1 million state pilot program to encourage employers to invest in health
screening and wellness education programs at worksites.
"Demand for health-care services
in New York, as well as health insurance premiums, are skyrocketing," Senate
Majority Leader Joseph Bruno said at a press conference announcing the "New
York Wellness Works" proposal
The
Business Council and the Chamber Alliance of New York State (CANYS) have
launched a new electronic advocacy initiative in support of two bills designed
to make health insurance more affordable for small businesses.
One of the bills (S.3795-Seward/A.7413-Morelle)
is designed to make affordable health insurance more accessible for sole
proprietors by preserving sole proprietors' longstanding access to group-rated
health insurance coverage
The Assembly Majority has
proposed a plan that couples a crackdown on auto-insurance fraud with a
two-year freeze in insurance rates and a 17 percent cut in personal injury
premiums.
The plan, announced May 2,
also includes measures designed to crack down on fraud, which the Assembly
release said costs New York drivers more than $1 billion a year
The state has announced two
more major investments in regional high-tech research and development initiatives.
On April 27, the Governor
announced plans for a new Center of Excellence in Information Technology
on Long Island. He said support for this center from all sources would reach
$100 million
IBM will invest $100 million
in a new nanoelectronics research center at the State University of New
York at Albany, and the state has committed another $50 million to the center.
The new private and public
funding for the university's planned Center of Excellence in Nanoelectronics
was announced Monday at a university event attended by Governor Pataki,
Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver,
along with John E
New York State insurers'
losses due to personal-injury auto accidents increased by 79 percent from
1995 to 2000, a significantly steeper increase than other states with no-fault
insurance, a new study
has found.
During that
period, the average increase in other no-fault states studied was only 25
percent, according to Elizabeth Sprinkel, senior vice president of the Insurance
Research Council (IRC), which produced the report
Yet another energy expert
has warned that New York State must add significant new electricity generating
capacity soon to avoid skyrocketing electricity prices and setbacks to competitiveness
in energy markets.
David B. Patton, the independent
market advisor of the New York State Independent System Operator (ISO),
issued a market assessment April 17 at a meeting of the ISO board