WHITE PLAINS — The $28 million addition to the high school here was finished almost two years late and cost potentially millions more to build because of a law, unique to New York, that requires breaking up control of the project among four contractors.

State, school and municipal officials have been saying for years that the 92-year-old statute, known as the Wicks law, adds hundreds of millions of dollars to the expense of building public structures in New York.

It is one of several laws unique to New York that business and government leaders say drive up taxes in the Empire State, whose residents are the most heavily taxed in the nation.

In this fourth installment of "New York: State in Decline" Jay Gallager of our Albany bureau examines five of those statutes. In addition to the Wicks law, these "only in New York" laws measures:

•Increase the cost of liability insurance for contractors;

•Inflate the costs of disability payments to some injured workers;

•Boost salaries for police and firefighters;

•Encourage costly liability claims against local governments.

The five articles in this installment at indexed at the right.

© 2004, Gannett News Service