While tax breaks are the cornerstone of some of the programs in New York state meant to boost business, there are other areas where the state can become an impediment to anyone wanting to do business. A state report released recently points the finger at a bureaucracy that gets in the way.
There are 750,000 regulations on the books in New York state, many of them outdated and never reviewed. And many of them can get in the way of New York's businesses.
Oneida Democrat Dave Valesky was on the Senate Majority Coalition committee that studied these state regulations in a series of meetings, surveys and hearings last year.
"Dealing with the state is often very time consuming and can also be very expensive because it can hold up projects and therefore hold up job creation efforts," Valesky said.
Valesky says the group has come up with more than 2,200 regulatory burdens businesses in New York state must contend with, that should be changed.
“Even though New York is open for business more than we have been in a long, long time, as a result of the efforts that we’ve made over the last couple of years under the governor’s leadership, the fact of the matter is, we still have a long way to go, and that’s the moral of the story that came out of these hearings," Valesky said.
Valesky is optimistic some of this bureaucratic bloat can be eliminated because it fits in nicely with Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s proposed focus on regulatory reform mentioned in his State of the State speech.
“We said to him 'we’ve done a lot of the legwork already, so lets roll up our sleeves, and lets address some things that have been making it difficult over the years, and lets make some real progress this session,'” Valesky said.
