Last Tuesday, the Times Union criticized the state Senate majority coalition's effort to reduce duplicative government regulation and trimming red tape for New York businesses. As the co-leader of the Senate, I was shocked to read the substance of the Times Union's critique since one of the most frequent complaints I hear from small business owners is New York's ever-increasing bureaucracy.
Government regulation has a strong and important role in our society. Regulations that protect our environment, ensure food safety and keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill are examples of necessary safeguards that only a government can and should enforce.
But the necessity of several hundred critical safety regulations should not be used to justify thousands of others with dubious merit. That's why a bipartisan group of senators recently came together to solicit testimony from New Yorkers so that we could hear more about lesser-known regulations that affect everyday businesses. The testimony was eye-opening, which is why two weeks ago, the bipartisan commission compiled and released this testimony to the public.
The commissioners deliberately withheld judgment on the testimony provided. Instead, the panel stated that this testimony was only the start of the process and that now the real work of evaluating these Byzantine rules must begin.
Businesses flocked to the commission's hearings, where businesses from every field — from agriculture, to manufacturing, to mom and pop stores — were invited to tell us more about the red tape they regularly encounter.
At one hearing, a representative from the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo testified that it was routinely required to submit paper medical records instead of electronic ones. Not only does the printing and shipping of these records drain money away from other critical areas of medical research, it also flies in the face of our state's effort to reduce health care costs. We also learned that some New York businesses, like auto dealers, are financially jammed by having to keep state-mandated paper sales records. Lifting this archaic rule in the digital age could save $2.7 million annually.
Finally, we learned that not only are many industries required to submit paper rather than digital records, but that some businesses are required to use special "buff" paper for official documentation. When these businesses asked for why they needed to use the more costly paper, the agency had no real answer.
The commission found that trimming unneeded regulations could save an estimated $274 billion, a comparative number based on actual savings seen by the state of California after it cut regulations in 2009.
That's why making improvements to our regulatory structure is not just an administrative necessity – it's an economic one, too. New York has more than 750,000 regulations, and while many of them are essential, there are those that can be burdensome and costly.
We can do better.
We promised businesses that we'd do this, but not at the expense of our environment, food safety protections or gun controls.
This commission was tasked with the sole responsibility to make certain that the benefits of regulations outweigh the costs. This is a sensible approach to regulatory reform in New York and I believe we owe it to all New Yorkers to make government work for the people it serves.
These hearings were the start of the legislative process.
Now starts the real work of combing through the regulations and determining which ones work, which ones need to be modified, and which duplicative or unnecessary regulations may need to be repealed.
That's a conversation worth having and one that I think New Yorkers deserve.
Jeffrey D. Klein is Senate co-leader and leader of the Independent Democratic Conference.