The list
goes on...

Continued from the previous section: more of the gripes raised by business leaders and government officials.

• Voted, over Pataki's veto, to take more than $2.5 billion in New York City debt incurred in the 1970s and have it picked up by state taxpayers, at a cost of about $2.6 billion in additional interest over 30 years.

• Failed to enact limits in the length of time injured workers can collect benefits — a provision unique to New York that helps to account for workers compensation insurance rates being out of line with the rest of the country, even though weekly benefits that injured workers are paid are among the lowest in the country.

• Left intact the "scaffold law'' that makes employers liable for all injuries incurred by a fall on a work site — even if the person injured was drunk, under the influence of drugs or even trying to steal property.

• Didn't change the "vicarious-liability'' statute, a law unique to New York that makes car-leasing companies liable for claims against their customers.


Insiders rule, New Yorkers suffer (continued)

Workers are displaced, and discouraged

The Binghamton region has lost half of its manufacturing jobs in the past decade and almost 10 percent in the past year. Overall, jobs have slipped almost 6 percent during the past two years in the region.

"We're all in the same boat. We're all sinking," said Mike McManus, 59, of the Binghamton suburb of Endwell, who did defense-related contract work for 30 years before being laid off 18 months ago. His daughter left the area to take a public-relations job near Asheville, N.C., two years ago. His son, who manages a local arts-and-crafts store, may follow.

While some areas of the state, such as Westchester, Rockland and Putnam counties, have weathered the recession fairly well, others have been hit hard. Rochester, long the most affluent region north of Westchester, lost 26,650 jobs in the two years that ended July 1 — a drop of almost 5 percent. Its flagship employer, Eastman Kodak Co., which two decades ago employed 61,000 in the region, recently announced more layoffs that will cut the work force to as few as18,000.

Service jobs, such as those in hospitals or restaurants, have replaced some of the Kodak losses. But younger workers find it's hard to live on their own — much less have a career — on the money they earn. Total wages dropped by 1.6 percent in the Rochester region from 2001-02, according to a study done by the Fiscal Policy Institute, a labor-backed think tank.

Lygas, the hotel desk clerk, said she sometimes needs help from her family to pay for groceries.

"Looking in the paper today, there was nothing I'm looking for,'' she said. "You can clean somewhere, or get a part-time job. That's not doable for me.''

Many in her generation have fled the state. Between 1995 and 2000, New York lost 150,000 people aged 25 to 34 — the biggest drop of any state.

Lygas said she wants to stay in the region because she has family and friends there. But those ties are fraying. Her 54-year-old father, a longtime toolmaker for the Xerox Corp. in Webster, was laid off at Christmas and moved to Florida. One of her best friends recently moved to Baltimore, where her friend's husband landed a job after being laid off 18 months earlier by Kodak.

The state's economy is creating more jobs like the one she holds now and fewer ones like her father had, according to a new report. The 15 industries that added the most jobs between 1992 and 2000, such as nursing care, temporary services and data processing, paid an average of about $41,000 a year, according to the Fiscal Policy Institute.

Meanwhile, the 15 industries that shed the most jobs — like banks, insurance companies and manufacturers of cars, computer equipment and other products — paid their workers an average of almost $60,600 a year.

Of course, people in other states face hard economic times as well. The country has lost 3 million jobs in the past two years, 2.7 million of them well-paid manufacturing positions from companies that have been battered by overseas competition, especially from China. For the first time since the Great Depression, jobs have shrunk nationally for three years in a row. Even in good times, the Northeast has been growing more slowly than the rest of the United States. The Sun Belt, with its cheaper work force, lower taxes and more lax regulations, has drawn jobs away from the Northeast for decades.

But even within the region, New York's poor record stands out. Since 1965, the number of jobs in the state has grown by only about 30 percent, the lowest figure of any state, or just a little more than a quarter of the rate of the nation as a whole, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. Massachusetts and New Jersey have grown jobs more than twice as fast. Even fellow Rust Belt state Pennsylvania outpaced the Empire State.

Pataki pointed out that in 1999 and 2000, New York's rate of job growth was above the nation's for the first time in decades. He said the most recent job-loss figures are roughly in line with other manufacturing states in the region, and were held down by the terror attacks of Sept. 11 and the stock market collapse fueled by corporate accounting scandals.

"We had extraordinary events," Pataki said. "Maybe you could have predicted Enron. I didn't. Maybe someone could have predicted the economic consequences of 9/11. I certainly couldn't have."