Working on helping small businesses succeed

Rolling up their sleeves and getting to work for the area’s businesses is the Long Island Business Council’s mission, according to its respective chairs: Richard Bivone of East Meadow and Robert Fonti of Suffolk.

With that task in mind, the organization had State Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos (R-Rockville Centre) as its guest speaker at a meeting held at the Molly College annex in East Farmingdale on Feb. 10.

Focusing on how the State Legislature could help businesses on Long Island and throughout New York, Skelos recounted his meeting with newly inaugurated Gov. Andrew Cuomo last year and their discussion about the need for Albany to stop acting in a dysfunctional manner. “We have to start talking to each other instead of shouting,” Skelos said. “When there is shouting, no one hears. We have philosophical differences, but we have to try to resolve those differences to get things done.”

He pointed to the repeal of a good portion of the MTA tax that 72,000 businesses on Long Island and 80 percent throughout the state won’t have to pay as an example of this newly established spirit of cooperation in the state capital.

Recognition of the MTA repeal was received by applause from the audience, several of whom represented local chambers of commerce. Dolores Rome, the first vice president of the East Meadow Chamber of Commerce, said squashing the MTA tax lifted a huge burden from her group’s more than 100 members. “It allowed them to put money back into their businesses and they really needed that,” said Rome, who likes that Skelos, has a “willingness to always look out for small businesspeople.”

To help ensure that existing businesses remain here and new businesses think of Long Island as an attractive place to settle, Skelos said that cutting property taxes and working on reducing state mandates,

especially regarding education are two ways to ease the burden on taxpayers. “Making it more affordable to live on Long Island is critically important,” he said, adding that Long Island has lost more jobs than other areas of the state due to the affordability factor.

Long Island’s centers of higher learning and research are places that could propel creation of businesses that are successful such as Farmingdale-based OSI Pharmaceuticals that began at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Skelos said.

Asked about the possibility of eliminating specific onerous rules that seem unfair to businesses, the senator said that paring the bureaucracy that they face is part of making New York and Long Island more attractive to companies and smaller enterprises. “Making government more efficient, throwing out business regulations that are counterproductive and looking at the permitting process, that is something we are very focused on,” Skelos said.

Streamlining the permitting process is also one of several policy recommendations that originated out of a small business study put together by Dowling College. These recommendations have been endorsed by the Long Island Business Council and are part of the group’s lobbying efforts in Albany. They were scheduled to meet with state officials on Feb. 15. “It’s important that it’s submitted to the state because it’s important to keep business moving forward on Long Island,” Bivone said.