This Time, the Business Council is Right

It must be Odd Bedfellows Day. First we give props to Gov. Pataki for the Contract Disclosure bill.

Now, we're forced into rare agreement with the Business Council of New York State, the ideological knee-jerk lobbying arm of the state's more conservative business interests.

Eliot Spitzer's comparison of the upstate economy to Appalachia was fair and justified. As Daniel Walsh, CEO of the Business Council, writes in an op-ed in the Rochester D&C today, "Is upstate really like Appalachia? The uncomfortable truth is that, in some ways, it is in even worse condition than the region that has symbolized American poverty for decades."

The WFP's prescription for recovery and growth varies sharply from the Business Council's, but our basic diagnosis is pretty similar.

In contrast, State GOP chair Steve Minarik seems to put his party in a state of denial and places politics ahead of policy -- arguing in another op-ed that glass is half full.

The truth is a decline in public investment and the absence of a real strategy to strengthen good jobs over the Pataki era has worsened economic conditions in the region.