The Republican Assembly Minority has proposed a $1.38 billion tax-cut
program that includes the elimination of the energy gross receipts tax
this year and a suspension of state sales taxes on gasoline and diesel
fuel for the coming summer.
"Business leaders keep telling us that elimination of the gross receipts
tax on energy is the single most important action the state can take
to spur job growth - and we're listening," said Assembly Minority Leader
John Faso
Restoring health-quality grants The Business Council and two western
New York health-care groups are urging lawmakers to fund two grant programs
designed to seek new ways to measure and improve health-care quality.
The Business Council, the Niagara Health Quality Coalition, and the Rochester
Health Commission want lawmakers to restore funding for the Health Information
and Quality Improvement grant program and the Quality Measurement grant
program, said Elliott Shaw, director of government affairs for The Council
and its health-care specialist
Assembly includes key business tax cuts, with partial repeal of GRT
Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver unveiled a proposal March 14 for some $750 million in tax cuts targeted to working families and job creation.
Silver said the tax cuts would be part of the Assembly budget resolution to be considered on the floor on March 15
A leading Assembly Democrat is calling for repeal the state's gross receipts tax (GRT) on energy.
Robin Schimminger (D-Erie County), chairman of the Assembly Committee on Economic
Development, Job Creation, Commerce and Industry, today announced a bill that would phase
out the tax over two years
The Senate Majority has released the report of its task force on privacy, including more than 50
different policy recommendations.
At a news conference Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno said the task force had
investigated a range of privacy issues to understand how personal information is collected and
distributed and "how to balance the need for putting protections in place with the legitimate
needs of businesses to have certain information, and the ability of government to function
The Assembly has unanimously voted to continue the state's Power for Jobs program for three
more years by providing an additional three-year term for each of 330 contracts made in the first
year of the program. These contracts, representing 267 megawatts of power, will begin to expire
next March
A member of The Council's Workers' Compensation Committee will represent The
Council on a state commission studying special funds in New York's workers' comp
system.
Patrick McLaughlin, training manager for United Parcel Service for upstate New York, was named to the commission by the Governor, who created the commission last March with strong Council support
The Council is seeking members' input on a bill to give tax
credits for the construction or rehabilitation of buildings that meet certain
environmental standards.
"We have concerns about this bill, and we'll use our members' input to decide whether to take a formal position on it," said Ken Pokalsky, The Council's environmental specialist
Upstate growth beats national average for first time in 11 years; Pataki credits tax cuts
Private-sector job growth both upstate and statewide exceeded private-sector job growth
nationally last year, Governor Pataki said today.
Final 1999 data from the state Department of Labor show that New York's private-sector
employment grew by 2
New York has made more progress in deregulating energy than all other states except
Pennsylvania, a comprehensive new study of energy deregulation nationwide shows.
New York is outpacing all other states in deregulating energy, the new Retail Energy
Deregulation (RED) Index 2000 said. The index was done by the Center for the Advancement of
Energy Markets, an independent think tank that promotes the transition from monopoly to
competition in energy