The Business Council is asking members for input on revised amendments
to state regulations governing the state's Superfund and brownfield
redevelopment programs that have been published by the state Department
of Environmental Conservation (DEC).
DEC has scheduled a series of meetings and hearings to solicit
public comments on the changes
The Business Council is urging the Governor to sign into a law
a bill that would change the mechanism by which employers that obtain
workers' compensation coverage through group self-insured trusts
pay mandatory surcharges on workers' comp premiums.
Until 1999, most employers paid assessments based on indemnity
losses, said Ed Reinfurt, vice president of The Business Council
The Business Council is urging Governor Pataki to sign into law
a new bill extending the state's Power for Jobs and Economic Development
Power programs, and is urging the many Council members that participate
in the programs to give the Governor the same encouragement
Residents in flooded areas of Montgomery County, including the
communities of St. Johnsville and Canajoharie, are in need of supplies,
officials from the Montgomery
County Chamber said today.
Flood victims need bottled water, batteries, flashlights, and non-perishable
foods, the chamber said
New York lawmakers ended the 2006 legislative session without enacting
the most onerous of the so-called Wal-Mart bills that would have
dramatically inflated employers' costs and eliminated tens of thousands
of jobs in New York.
The legislative session was also marked by favorable action on
several other issues that are Council priorities, including a key
change in the way workers' comp assessments are calculated for self-insured
trusts
More than 50 leaders in education and
business from both the public and private sectors gathered at the
Business Council’s headquarters in Albany on June 21 to discuss
ways to help New York’s students be better prepared for entering
the global workforce
Most cities in New York State have lost population in the last five years, with especially large declines in major Upstate cities, the U.S. Census Bureau reported.
Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse lost population, around 4 percent in each city, during the year ending July 1, 2005. All three cities have lost population each year since the last nationwide census in 2000, according to the bureau
Leading members of the state Senate and Assembly have announced
the introduction of new workers’ compensation legislation
which includes cost-saving reforms and benefit increases.
The legislation would also reform the state’s notorious Scaffold
Law by allowing evidence of worker negligence and employer safety
in determining liability
Two recently published stories in the New York Times chronicling
the demise of the Upstate economy and the region’s startling
population loss rely heavily on data from The Business Council and
its research affiliate, the Public Policy Institute.
A June 11 article by Times reporter Sam Roberts noted
“When Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, a Democrat, likened
upstate New York to Appalachia earlier this year, some Republicans
accused him of city-centric elitism
Out-migration of young people is threatening the health of Upstate
New York, the New York Times in an article chronicling
the population losses in Upstate New York.
“From 1990 to 2004, the number of 25-to-34-year-old residents
in the 52 counties north of Rockland and Putnam declined by more
than 25 percent,” the June 13 story by Times reporter
Sam Roberts said