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What's going
on here?

Ask business leaders and elected officials to critique Albany's performance, and they usually point to the $2.8 billion in tax increases voted in 2003. But they also cite these actions -- or inactions:

• Borrowed $4.2 billion to close the budget gap. The cash, borrowed from the payments due to the state over the next 17 years from tobacco companies in settlement of a lawsuit, is to be used to pay for ongoing expenses.

• Failed to limit the choice of drugs Medicaid recipients can use for some routine ailments, like arthritis and stomach acid. The measure, enacted by about 30 other states, would have saved New York taxpayers about $130 million.

• Failed to enact any steps local governments said were needed to help control taxes. Those include getting rid of a law that makes governments award four contracts for big public-works projects and another that gives a state panel the final say over the salaries of local police and firefighters. Another would have limited the payments of lawsuits by local governments in a procedure similar to one that limits awards against the state.

List continues with next section of this article

Insiders rule, New Yorkers suffer (continued)

Pataki: Blame the legislature

Pataki, in a wide-ranging interview, said he was disappointed more wasn't done to spur the economy during the last session, where his vetoes of some spending and tax increases were overridden by lawmakers.

"There are enormous entrenched interests in the Legislature that don't want change," he said.

Pataki, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, D-Manhattan, and Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, R-Rensselaer County, are the "three men in a room" who make all major decisions, often secreted away in the governor's office, emerging only to offer sound bites on whatever agreements they manage to reach, or to blame one another when they fail to act.

But legislative leaders say businesses fared well this year at the Capitol. About $700 million worth of scheduled tax cuts for businesses went into effect, and a deal made to ease redevelopment of polluted industrial sites.

"We got a bunch of things done," said Bruno, who acknowledged many reforms, such as cutting Medicaid spending and tightening workers compensation costs, were blocked.

Silver cited the decision to restore hundreds of millions in education aid that Pataki proposed cutting as a victory for business.

"An educated work force is one of the keys" for a healthy economy, he said.

Still, since the recession started in March 2001, the state has lost 265,000 jobs, 3.1 percent of the total. That compares to a loss of 2 percent nationally. The job-loss figures include about 100,000 positions eliminated after the Sept. 11 terror attacks. The New York losses also include 107,000 manufacturing jobs, a decline of almost 15 percent.