AWARD WINNING EDITORIAL
MAY 24, 2021 VOL. 57, No. 21
I N CLU DI N G TH E H U DSO N VALLE Y WE E K LY S EC TIO N
westfaironline.com
LICENSED TO DEATH NY, CT among worst states when it comes to barriers for businesses BY KEVIN ZIMMERMAN kzimmerman@westfairinc.com
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new study from the Cato Institute finds that New York is the 44th worst state when it comes to regulatory barriers facing entrepreneurs. But at least it isn’t Connecticut, which ranks dead last.
“Entrepreneurs and Regulations: Removing State and Local Barriers to New Businesses” was written by Chris Edwards, Cato’s director of tax policy studies. It includes the Entrepreneur Regulatory Barriers Index, which ranks the states on how their regulatory barriers impact startup businesses. The overall rank is based on scores for 17 variables averaged across four categories: • small business views of regulations; • occupational licensing;
• other entry barriers; and • regulation-related costs. “I was not going to do an index originally,” Edwards told the Business Journal. “I started out looking at startup businesses and how their rate of opening had fallen over the last two decades.” Noting that many economists have concluded that the falloff is due to an increased rate of federal, state and local government regulations, Edwards said his research found that the share of U.S. jobs requiring an occupational license » LICENSED TO DEATH
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From bottles to buildings
Recycled glass gets new life in cement product BY BRIDGET MCCUSKER bmccusker@westfairinc.com In most of the U.S., the effort to recycle glass continues to be an economic and logistical challenge that most municipalities have not quite found a solution. Much of it continues to go to landfills. For Urban Mining CT, this large-scale waste was seen as an opportunity. The Grasso family, for several years, owned a concrete block manufacturing plant in Kingston, New York, so they were famil-
iar with the downsides of building with concrete. For one thing, it creates significant environmental emissions. “In the concrete and cement industry, cement is a critical component to building that we do globally,” said Patrick Grasso, managing partner at Urban Mining CT. “The production of cement is a big producer of carbon dioxide — almost on a ton-for-ton basis.” The concrete industry has traditionally utilized materials called pozzolans
in the past to replace cement. One of the most popular, however, was fly ash, a byproduct of burning coal for power — which is becoming less and less available. “There had been growing shortages in these historic products, such as fly ash and slag,” Grasso said. “Fly ash is from our coal burning power plants — and we’re shutting them all down. And slag is primarily an imported product, because it’s a byproduct of making steel, and » RECYCLED GLASS
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