News

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A controversial proposal to require health insurance to cover expanded health coverage for mental illness and substance abuse would significantly increase costs of health insurance, a new analysis shows. The Business Council is strongly opposing the bill (A

The Business Council is urging lawmakers to modify a sweeping new anti-smoking law because it severely penalizes businesses that have invested heavily in work areas that could accommodate smokers. In March, lawmakers abruptly passed a new anti-smoking law that prohibits smoking in any workplace that has even a single employee

The Business Council is strongly supporting a new reform bill that would help rein in New York's above-average workers' compensation costs by enacting four key reforms. The bill (S.5320-Libous) is in part a response to three other workers' compensation bills that propose significant benefits increases without any essential cost-cutting reforms, said Kerry Kirwan, The Council's legislative analyst specializing in workers' comp

Legislative leaders and the Pataki administration have been discussing options for refinancing the state Superfund and adopting a statewide brownfield program, but prospects for a resolution are uncertain, according to Ken Pokalsky, The Council's director of environmental and economic development programs

ALBANY—School districts across New York State plan to raise spending more than 2.5 times the rate of inflation, and increase property taxes more than 7 percent, a new "School Tax Watch" study by The Public Policy Institute finds. The increase in property-tax levies, more than four times the rate of inflation, comes despite the Legislature's imposition of a $1

Amid reports that the state is considering a significant increase in average workers' comp costs, The Business Council is stepping up its efforts to highlight the need for cost-cutting reforms and to oppose actions that would worsen the burden of comp costs

ALBANY—Almost 5,700 New York State business leaders have faxed over 28,000 letters to elected officials this eyar urging them not to increase state taxes. Almost a third of those correspondents logged on after the Legislature voted to increase income, sales and corporate taxes, but before it overrode Governor Pataki's veto of those tax increases

The Legislature overrode Governor George Pataki's vetoes to impose the first increases in state personal-income and sales taxes in three decades, along with targeted increases in business taxes. Despite multi-million-dollar lobbying campaigns by public-employee unions, however, The Business Council was successful in persuading legislators not to adopt the "New Jersey plan" of major, across-the-board corporate tax increases

Cutting spending and making government more productive could save New York City from the economic damage that would inevitably result from proposed tax increases, according to former Governor Hugh L. Carey and other business and civic leaders