New York businesspeople watch taxes, regulation, not politics

But many of those in the business community said that was expected. Besides, the pandemic-era shortage of workers has meant that fewer and fewer, if any, employers pay the minimum anyway, at least if they want to keep and retain people.

“You show me anybody who is working for $15 an hour,” said Art Van Buren, a small-business operator in Altamont who sells and services pressure washing machines across the Capital Region. He runs the company with his wife and son.

Fast food restaurants pay well above the minimum these days, and the kind of industries that Van Buren services — construction and trucking companies as well as highway barns and school maintenance departments — all pay considerably more.

As is the case for many small businesses, completion of the annual state budget is almost a non-event.

Moreover, business advocates and lobbyists say they watch the budget for things that didn’t happen, be they increased regulations and mandates, or relief they were hoping for.

This year, business leaders were disappointed to see no relief for the COVID-19 costs they are still incurring, such as higher unemployment insurance premiums and mandated sick leave policies.

Those expenses have been particularly hard to swallow, they say, given that the federal government is rapidly moving beyond the pandemic.

President Joe Biden in a “60 Minutes” interview last fall declared that “the pandemic is over.” And vaccine mandates for federal employees will be lifted on May 11.

But in New York, pandemic costs remain in place.

Employers, for example, must still continue paying for extra weeks of sick leave if an employee has COVID-19.

While no one would argue that people struck by the virus shouldn’t have to come to work, having the employer bear that cost adds up, said Frank Kerbein, director of the Business Council’s Human Resources Center.

Initially, the federal government reimbursed the cost of those extra sick days but that has ended. 

But the mandate to give more sick days remains in place in New York, with the cost being shifted to employers.

In addition to their normal sick leave, either in union contracts or company policies, employees can take an extra three weeks for COVID-19 leave during their lifetimes.

Companies with fewer than 100 employees pay for the first five days of this COVID-19 leave. Those with 100 or more pay for 14 days. That can add up to thousands of dollars a year for some businesses.

“Employers are being asked to pay for the cost of COVID. It’s the cumulative effect,” Kerbein said.

Those costs come atop extra unemployment insurance premium surcharges that employers have to pay, also thanks to COVID-19.

Because New York’s unemployment insurance fund ran out of money during the height of the pandemic, the state borrowed $9.3 billion from the U.S. Treasury. The state fund is now paying that back through a surcharge on unemployment insurance premiums that all businesses pay.

New York, Kerbein noted, is the only state that didn’t use some of Biden’s American Rescue Plan money, dedicated to COVID-19 expenses, to help repay some of that money.

“New York has done absolutely nothing” to help with that, added Ashley Ranslow, New York Director for the National Federation of Independent Businesses. “Other states have addressed this problem. New York state continues to ignore it.”

Businesses might pay attention if a budget brought them some tax relief but that hasn’t been the case lately.