Westchester County Business Journal 9/03/2012 Issue

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WCBJ

WESTCHESTER COUNTY

BUSINESS JOURNAL

YOUR only SOURCE FOR regional BUSINESS NEWS | westfaironline.com

September 3, 2012 | VOL. 48, No. 36

MTA tax down, but not dead Railroad to appeal court ruling

The ‘Rye town’ no more • 2

BY JOHN GOLDEN jgolden@westfairinc.com

B Alon Ben-Gurion, the general manager of the Hilton Westchester.

State’s SEQRA changes get mixed reviews from business groups BY PATRICK GALLAGHER pgallagher@westfairinc.com

Business advocates have given mixed grades to a series of proposed revisions to the state’s environmental regulations governing developments and municipal actions, applauding the state’s openness to changes but cautioning that the changes could mean new burdens. In separate letters to the Department of Environmental Conservation, which oversees the implementation of the State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA),

the Westchester County Association (WCA) and the Orange County Partnership (OCP) each responded with remarks and proposals to a draft scoping document released July 11 by DEC. It outlines how the agency plans to revise the law. “The department’s proposals are clearly offered in the spirit of improving the SEQRA process, which, as it currently exists, is openended and leads to uncertainty,” Orange County Partnership officials wrote in a letter to DEC Commissioner Joseph Martens. “However, we are concerned that the department’s proposals either do not go far enough,

or would be, in practice, counterproductive.” The partnership, which comprises Hudson Valley Pattern for Progress, the Orange County Chamber of Commerce and the Builders Association of the Hudson Valley, was also critical of the small window for public comment on the document. Maureen Halahan, OCP president and CEO, said DEC’s refusal to extend the public comment period, which ran through Aug. 10, was “short-sighted and flies in the face of the governor’s policies that promote transparency.”

united way marks 50 • 5

SEQRA, page 6

uoyed by a state judge’s recent ruling that the strongly opposed Metropolitan Transportation Authority payroll tax on employers is unconstitutional, attorneys are pressing for a court judgment that would refund all money paid by employers in the region since the 3-year-old tax was enacted. MTA officials called the Aug. 22 ruling by state Supreme Court Justice R. Bruce Cozzens Jr. “erroneous” and warned that the loss of revenue resulting from the court decision in Nassau County would be “catastrophic” for the MTA and for the state economy. A spokesman said the MTA, which stands to lose more than $1.2 billion in annual revenue from the tax, will appeal the judge’s decision. The state Department of Taxation and Finance on its website advised that “this litigation is not concluded” and said employers should continue to pay and file payroll tax returns. Businesses in the affected counties pay 34 cents on every $100 of payroll. “This is not over yet,” said Michele Babcock, an attorney at Jacobowitz and Gubits L.L.P. in Walden. She and her firm represented three Orange County municipalities and the Orange County Chamber of Commerce in the legal challenge to the payroll tax. Babcock said the MTA is expected to file MTA tax, page 6

health care success • 15


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