Readers aren’t at all surprised by the announcement that Starwood Hotels global headquarters is relocating a few miles away to Stamford, CT, after New York failed to match the level of financial and tax incentives being offered by Connecticut. Many are citing New York’s high-tax status and its non-business-friendly atmosphere, as well as the high cost of living in New York as a disincentive to staying.
Here are some more comments about the move:

Soon all of the companies and large wage earners will be forced out of New York. Businesses will go where their cost to profit margin is least, and high earners will go to where they can keep the greatest percentage of their earnings. A few miles can make a big difference for both. The governor and state legislature had better wake up soon.

A civil service workforce that exceeds 200,000 requires a lot of tax money to pay its salaries and benefits. This is what we have in New York, a bloated bureaucracy, which feeds off the taxpayers, including corporate taxpayers. Corporations know that New York is sinking, and that Albany will continue to gouge them with higher and higher taxes to feed the bureaucracy. That’s why they are leaving New York. Now homeowners are following suit. Who can blame them?

I moved my business and my residence from New York (Larchmont) to Connecticut (Greenwich) a few years ago. I save a bundle in property tax and income tax every year. I also find the services are much better here. I was born in Westchester and lived most of my life there, but the taxes and arrogant politicians were just too much to take.

This is what happens when your state treats businesses and the working-class people as “revenue” generators. … In a few years or less this will be one of the poorest states in the U.S., diminished in population and political power.

Video surveillance tape of Diane Schuler taken at a gas station in Liberty and audio clips of the calls to state police from her family that were posted on LoHud.com has ignited among readers the discussions about the deaths, medical examiner’s report and continuing coverage of this accident. They are also picking apart the video, which doesn’t have sound, and trying to analyze it.
One reader wrote:

Crazy how many of you can come up with so much from that video. I see nothing that would say she was drunk, stoned, etc. She walked into a store, seemed to look around for something, ask the clerk and walked out. I have done that a hundred times.

I’ll concede that her exit from the lot is rather sketchy, but I see (presumably sober) people drive like that everyday. I still don’t think we know the whole story.

You can barely ID the person in them so how in the world could you tell if they are drunk or stoned. She could be wasted or sober, no way to tell.

Is all of this really necessary? What does it prove? We all know that they tried to locate her and the children. We all know the tragic outcome. What purpose does posting the calls and the videos serve?

How is it that you can’t grasp that there is obviously a lot yet to learn about what happened that day, and that the Journal News is providing a service by continuing to pursue the story?

Listening to the calls—the first of which came in after the crash had already occurred—it’s clearer than ever that the state police need to review and improve their procedures for handling calls about an impaired driver. They’d been getting multiple calls over the course of 90 minutes about a weaving, tailgating red Windstar being driven by a woman, then all these calls from relatives, and they couldn’t even connect two dots? Pretty scary, unacceptable stuff.

The state Legislature has passed a law to make driving drunk with a kid in the car a felony. Will it curb drunken driving? Some say no, but the dialogue over this bill has raised awareness/education on the issue. Also included in the bill, the requirement that  people convicted of drunken driving have an ignition-interlock system installed as a condition of their sentence.

Leandra’s law is named after 11-year-old Leandra Rosado, was killed when a friend’s mom driving her to a sleepover crashed her station wagon in Manhattan. The driver’s been charged with DWI. What a tragedy, even moreso considering that only a few months before, Diane Schuler drove the wrong way on the Taconic, drunk and high, according to toxicology reports, and killed herself, her nieces, her daughter and three Yonkers men in a vehicle she struck.

After the Taconic tragedy, Gov. David Paterson proposed the Child Passenger Protection Act. (It later became Leanda’s Law.) The Editorial Board then weighed in, calling the proposed law “wholly proper,” but noting, tough sanctions alone won’t solve the problem.” here’s a slice:

Kids are in no position to find another ride or snatch away a drunk’s keys. Heightened sanctions, however, should not be construed as a salve for the harm to be avoided.

It was great to see that  Assemblywoman Amy Paulin picked up on the Editorial Board’s call for New York to enact a law that would require a three foot safety buffer for motorists passing a cyclist on the road.

This press release just came into our inbox.

“Assemblywoman Paulin announced the introduction of a bill that will require motorists to remain at least three feet away from cyclists on the road.  This clearance will give motorists a margin of error when passing cyclists in case either the motorist or the cyclist is suddenly required to change course.

“The need for this legislation was highlighted last week when Greenburgh resident and cyclist Merrill Cassell was crushed under the wheels of a Westchester Bee-Line bus.  Merrill, a tireless advocate for making cycling a realistic transportation option, was traveling in the same direction as a Bee-Line bus on Route 119 in Tarrytown.

“We don’t want people to fear for their lives while bike riding” said Assemblywoman Paulin, “It’s common sense that we pass bills that encourage cycling, an act that encourages good health and helps the environment.”

Enacting a three-foot rule will help increase public awareness that cyclists have a right to be on the road as well as educate motorists about safe practices with cyclists on the road.

“Making roads safer for cyclists is essential in our car-centric world,” said David Wilson, president of the 1,400-member Westchester Cycle Club and co-founder of the Westchester-Putnam Bike Walk Alliance. “The three-foot rule will create a safety buffer between cars and cyclists.”

According to Jennifer Clunie, executive director of the New York Bicycle Coalition, at least 17 states have passed laws requiring motorists to give cyclists a three-foot buffer, including Connecticut.

“Cyclists may have the need-as well as the legal right-to move further into the travel lane due to hazards such as potholes and gravel, and to be more visible to drivers,” said Clunie, “Enactment of a three foot minimum safe passing law is a step in the right direction toward reducing the high number of bicyclist and pedestrian injures and fatalities that occur each year. The bill will make our roadways safer for everyone.”

We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.

A federal drug sweep by the FBI and local and county police netted 33 gang members in Westchester County and lots of discussion by readers on drug problems in the Lower Hudson Valley and beyond. Here’s what people are saying about the raid, which was carried out last night and this morning.

One reader had this to say about the raid:

Outstanding. Keep up the good work. Drugs are the No. 1 menace to society, regardless of where you live, or your income level.

Really what it all comes down to is money. There is so much money in this stuff that it’s hard to get to the root of it. If this puts a crimp in (criminal activity) and takes 33 gang members off the street, not a bad thing. Let’s remember that the gang members do more than deal drugs so other criminal activities are affected.

OK, that’s the first step. The next one is to get them tried, convicted and sentenced quickly. No bail, no technicalities, and please, if any are here illegally, let’s put them on an airplane back to where they came from. It’s a start.

Wow! Nice job everyone!

Kudos to law enforcement for doing their job, now the justice system must do it’s job and put these guys away for good.

Thanks for informing LoHud. I work across the street from the building and all of my co-workers were wondering what was going on!

The so-called war on drugs is a joke. If drugs weren’t illegal the black market opportunities that they present wouldn’t exist. There would be far less violence and gang activity if drugs weren’t illegal and therefore worth so much money. Of course, then we wouldn’t need half of the policemen, corrections officers and court workers that we have now. We wouldn’t need to build as many jails, etc. I guess a lot of people’s livelihoods are tied to drugs on both sides of the law.

A van carrying prisoners leaves a processing center in Elmsford today. Federal and local law enforcement agencies arrested more than 40 people starting late Monday night throughout Westchester County after a months-long drug dealing investigation. Those arrested were processed at a warehouse used by Westchester County and then transported to U.S. courthouse in White Plains.

Despite Albany lawmakers assurances that higher fees for new license plates likely won’t come to pass, New York residents aren’t feeling reassured. In actuality, nothing about the proposal to change the license plates is finding much favor among LoHud readers—from the fees to the aesthetics of the plates to the elected officials spin on the situation. Here’s what some  had to say about the license plates and the possible higher fees.

One wrote:

This is indicative of the reason that people are leaving New York. Albany is simply a vacuum cleaner set on super high power and aimed at our wallets sucking them dry. And what do we get for it—a crumbling infrastructure (bridges, highways and roads) diminished services, etc.

While I don’t want to pay any more in taxes than I already do, I hardly think $25 is outrageous. If the purpose of these plates is to help determine the illegal plates that are currently on our roads, then $25 is a small price to pay. Perhaps fining these illegally registered cars will help close the budget deficit, and maybe at the same time makes our roads safer. I know it’s a long shot but $25 is better than a 1 percent tax increase to our properties or our incomes.

How much taxpayer money has been wasted by the state on this stupid idea already?

If they go through with this, we should make them as miserable as we can, legally. I intend to pay the $25 in pennies! They want to nickel and dime us, I’ll give them pennies for my thoughts!

That only hurts the clerks at DMV, who have been fighting this tax.

Vote in the county clerks. They are far more effective, winning three battles. … Senators = self-serving and ineffective, all talk and no action. County clerks = Get things done for the taxpayers.

Maybe we’ll save on license plates, but we’ll still (have) come up with the $129 million.

I wrote a column over the weekend about the Fort Hood shootings. It takes issue with the scapegoat reasoning that, somehow, less political awareness, less cultural awareness and less religious awareness are the answers to such violence. That seems to be the upshot of the argument being advanced by the Fox News types, who have concluded in the aftermath of the slayings that “PC” or “political correctness” is to blame for the 13  deaths—as opposed to the bureaucratic incompetence that kept the accused on the job, in an environment where guns are as common as water bottles.

“Being PC” is the pejorative used to describe those who would endeavor to arm themselves with knowledge about some of the real and perceived  differences among us, be they concerning race, politics, creed, geography or, in the case of the Foot Hood tragedy, religion. The man accused of carrying out the rampage is a Muslim.

My view, based on what’s been reported about the officer’s outlandish conduct and beliefs, is that more awareness would have helped, not hindered, the suspect’s peers and superiors in branding his  beliefs and conduct as aberrant and actionable.  As letter-writer Ed Krauss of Scarsdale notes in a letter to be published later this week, “PC” wasn’t to blame for these deaths; it was a failure to act on “CS” or common sense.

Here’s the column.

Given this past June’s Senate coup, counter-coup and high melodrama, I guess Gov. David Paterson thinks he better quickly lay all of his cards on the table at once, while he has the Legislature together as a (somewhat) functioning body. In this state, even getting a quorum is not a sure thing anymore. 

So for today’s extraordinary special session, the governor plans to introduce no fewer than nine big, game-changing measures at once—everything from gay marriage to the much-needed public authorities reform, a new (scaled-down) tier of public pension benefits to a property-tax cap. And don’t forget the $3.2 billion budget gap that needs to be filled.

All in a day’s work.

(Update: the Associated Press just reported that the Gay Marriage bill will not likely be voted on today. )

You have to feel for Dr. David Steiner and Dr. John B. King,, New York’s education commissioner and senior deputy commissioner, respectively. Steiner took office Oct. 1 and King on Oct. 5 — with New York in full fiscal meltdown and property taxpayers in near revolt. In Albany today, state lawmakers are picking up where Gov. David Paterson left off yesterday, when he renewed his proposal  to close this year’s $3.2 billion deficit and make a $2 billion down payment on next year’s $6.8 billion gap, in part by making mid-years cuts in education spending.

Steiner and King join the Editorial Board at 3 p.m. today to discuss their vision for public education. You can watch the Editorial Spotlight interview LIVE online.

David Milton Steiner, who was sworn in as the state education commissioner last month, will visit with the Editorial Board Tuesday afternoon as part of his state-wide listening tour. Steiner is the former dean of Hunter College’s School of Education and a champion of reform of teacher preparation programs.  He has said his goals include raising graduation standards, closing achievement gaps and better use of testing. We’ll tell you more after we meet him.