BILL
SUBJECT
DATE
The Business Council opposes this legislation, which would increase hazardous waste fees by more than 20 percent overall, and subject a number of businesses – mostly upstate manufacturers – to significant increases in their facility’s hazardous waste assessments, retroactive to January 1.
Contrary to earlier commitments for no new taxes, this imposes in effect a new tax on manufacturing operations that result in the generation of hazardous wastes.
While this bill increases state assessments on facilities that generate a large amount of hazardous wastes, it does so without regard to how efficient the facility is, or the degree to which it has reduced its generation of hazardous wastes over the past several years.
At a time when New York State should be positioning itself to become more economically competitive, this bill imposes significant new costs on some of the state’s largest manufacturers.As the fee increase comes mid-year, it is imposing costs that were not included in facility-specific budgets. As result, these affected facilities are going to be forced to make the kinds of hard choices that the legislature has been reluctant to do – reduce staff, reduce investments, reduce other categories of spending in order to pay these increased state assessments.
The Business Council would support a restructuring of hazardous wastes to produce a more equal sharing of costs; however, the real motive of this bill is not fee equity, but increased state revenues.
For these reasons, The Business Council opposes S.7988.