Lawmakers should not turn their backs on business

To the Editor:

A letter last week (“Paid sick leave is a good thing”) by my fellow county legislator Bill Reinhardt is unfortunately a prime example of how too many lawmakers do not understand the damage they are doing to some of the hardest-working members of our community; those who run small businesses and not-for-profits.

Mr. Reinhardt does not speak directly to any of the frustrated people cited in a previous Enterprise letter (“Paid sick leave law would harm businesses, not-for-profits, and consumers,” June 14, 2018, by Mark Grimm, a Republican county legislator, representing part of Guilderland), people who oppose the onerous plan to mandate several paid sick leave requirements on them.

Mr. Reinhardt also circulates the false statement that 40 percent of employees living in Albany County do not get paid sick leave. This is a number initiated by advocacy groups supporting the plan, a number that runs contrary to far more credible statistics provided by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. In fact, 81 percent of full-time private employees and 99 percent of government employees have paid sick leave nationwide. The Bureau does not break these statistics down by county.

New York State’s decades-old decline will never be reversed until we demand more accountability from those lawmakers turning their backs on the concerns of those who create the jobs in the first place.

Frank Mauriello

Minority Leader

Albany County Legislature

Editor’s note: Frank Mauriello is a Republican, representing part of Colonie in the Albany County Legislature.

The Enterprise wrote a story, “The Albany County Paid Sick Leave Act: Business and workers spar over whose health matters most,” on May 31, 2018, and an editorial on the subject, “Providing employees paid sick leave shows a healthy self-interest,” on June 7, 2018.

Our May 31 story referenced the study cited in the proposed law that says 40 percent of workers in Albany County lack access to paid sick time. Our reporter Sean Mulkerrin noted the discrepancy with the Bureau of Labor Statistics and so checked with Jessica Milli, study director for the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, the group that put out the report, who noted the number may have gone down a bit to 36 or 38 percent but explained the process her organization used to get the Albany County numbers and concluded, “I think even the 68 percent having access from the all private industry workers still runs into the same problem as using the Northeast numbers. There are some pretty high population cities/states that have passed laws in recent years that have increased the share of the overall population that has access, but again Albany hasn’t benefited from any of those.”

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