Despite ever-increasing public employee pension costs, lawmakers
in New York have introduced “literally hundreds” of
bills that would further increase government workers’ retirement
benefits, according to a new analysis by the Manhattan Institute’s
Empire Center
New York’s workers’ compensation costs are already
too high, and a proposal to significantly increase that burden highlights
again the importance of enacting cost-cutting reforms to address
the problem, The Business Council said in testimony submitted to
the state Insurance Dept
New York State is among the least economically free areas in North
America, according to a new report by the National Center for Policy
Analysis (NCPA) and the Fraser Institute of Canada.
The report, Economic Freedom of North America, measured the economic
freedom of all fifty states and 10 Canadian provinces in “an
attempt to gauge the extent of the restrictions on economic freedom
imposed by governments in North America
With
strong support from The Business Council, state legislators approved
legislation that would extend and modify several
New York
Power Authority (NYPA) programs that provide reduced-rate power
to eligible employers across the state
The Business Council is strongly supporting legislation to extend
and modify several New York Power Authority (NYPA) programs that
provide reduced-rate power to eligible employers across the state.
"Electric power costs continue to be a significant competitiveness
issue for New York State businesses, and especially for manufacturers,"
the Council said in a legislative memo supporting the bill
The Business Council is part of a broad coalition
of interest groups that developed legislation to require hospitals
to track and report incidences of hospital patients contracting
infections while hospitalized.
The Council and other interest groups have been
working with the chairs of the legislative health committees, state
Sen
The Council is opposing a bill (A.2517-B/DiNapoli) that would expand
the state’s bottle bill to cover most beverage containers,
and “capture” the larger volume of unclaimed bottle
deposits to finance new state spending.
The bill effectively imposes an additional tax of $40 million a
year or more on New York State consumers in the form of increased
unclaimed bottle deposits, the Council argued in a memo opposing
the bill
The early-June heat wave last week stretched the state's ’s
electricity-generating capacity to its upper limits, reinforcing
the need for more generating capacity in New York and a new law
to expedite the process by which power plants are sited.
By mid-afternoon on June 13, New York State was consuming nearly
30,000 megawatts of electricity, close to the state’s record
high consumption of 30,983, said Anne Van Buren, director of energy
and telecommunications
The proposed constitutional amendment to “reform” the
budget process is a serious threat to the stable operation of New
York’s state government and to its taxpayers, David F. Shaffer,
president of the Public Policy Institute, argued at a Rockefeller
Institute forum on the proposal
Providing and sustaining drug coverage for retired beneficiaries
will be the main topic at a Council-sponsored prescription drug
conference June 14 at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Albany.
The Council is co-sponsoring the half-day conference with the Centers
for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS)