Though his constituents’ outrage convinced him to withdraw it, Rochester-area state Sen. Jim Alesi’s recently publicized lawsuit against honest, hardworking small businessmen and two innocent homeowners speaks volumes about the corrupted and self-serving thinking that dominates Albany, even while local economies in western New York suffer.
How in the world does a state lawmaker who purports to be a booster of entrepreneurs and small businesses even consider filing such a shamelessly hypocritical lawsuit, especially since his broken leg was clearly the result of his own trespassing?
As a 1977 graduate of Fairport High School, I know members of the extended DiRisio family. But what I have to say here isn’t personal. It’s business — or at least it ought to be about business. Yet, as a spokesman for the American Tort Reform Association in Washington for many years, I’ve watched in disbelief as policymakers in Albany seem bent on making it all but impossible to build and grow a thriving, hiring business north of New York City.
A report released last October by the Empire Center for New York State Policy offered discouraging, but hardly surprising news: From 1993 through 2007, job creation in New York sputtered at just one-fifth the national average. Meanwhile, more than 393,000 jobs were relocated to other states, leaving New York among the very worst states in net outmigration of jobs. And 2010 U.S. Census figures indicate New York will lose some congressional representation as educated young people increasingly look for brighter career futures elsewhere.
Surely New York’s dauntingly high rates of taxation and suffocating regulations have much to do with the exodus of employers and jobseekers. But business executives responsible for decisions about expansion or relocation also will tell anyone who’ll listen that liability laws and lawsuits are major factors, too.
Unfortunately, too few policymakers in Albany are listening. And with all due respect to new Gov. Andrew Cuomo, personal injury lawyer and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver arguably remains the most powerful politician in the state. When Silver’s not too busy killing any tort reform legislation that might reduce the number of economy-sapping slip-and-fall lawsuits (like the one his bipartisan bedfellow Jim Alesi filed ), he’s counting unreported profits from his investment in a Buffalo area firm that lends money to tort lawyers so they can file still more lawsuits.
Policymakers can either increase liability and grow the number of lawsuits, or they can reduce liability and grow the economy. They can’t do both, no matter what astoundingly self-serving falsehoods Speaker Silver, Alesi and others may utter.
Like Rochesterians outraged by Alesi’s lawsuit, all New Yorkers must rise up and demand that Albany finally side with businesses and the economy against the slip-and-fall racketeers.
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