By ALLISSA KLINE
Business First

Unshackle Upstate, the bipartisan advocacy group that aims to reform New York state business policies, is closely watching Albany and its response to next year's anticipated $15 billion state budget deficit.

The organization will continue to push baseline regulatory reforms in 2009, but its first business item will be the state's fiscal mess, which must be addressed in order to move forward with more policy changes, coalition leaders say.

"We have to look at the budget deficit and deal with it from ... a cutting-expenses point of view," said Andrew Rudnick, president and CEO of the Buffalo Niagara Partnership. "We have to take advantage of the crisis in order to undertake spending restraints and reforms that should have been undertaken long ago."

Before the end of the year, the group plans to make recommendations about ways to reduce state spending on hot-topic items such as Medicaid, education and public-sector benefits, said Sandy Parker of the Rochester Business Alliance. The recommendations depend on Gov. David Paterson's proposed 2009-10 budget, which was released Dec. 16 and includes limited spending on Medicaid, a $400 million decrease in education spending and reform of the state Empire Zone program.

"There has to be a reduction in state spending without raising taxes," Parker said. "That's the major concern for us. It absolutely has to happen."

Additionally, the coalition will focus on:

• Property tax caps.

• Comprehensive energy reform.

• Hiring an executive director who will act as a "campaign manager" to lead the organization.

Rudnick said the group is interviewing candidates across Upstate for the new position, which could be filled by Jan. 1.

Unshackle Upstate, formed in 2006, consists of 73 partner organizations, which translates into 1,000 employers and more than 1 million workers. Its goal is to achieve business-friendly reforms in New York state that make it easier for businesses to operate here.

Workers' compensation, the Wicks and Scaffold laws and economic-development initiatives have topped the organization's reform agenda in previous years. As the state deals with its budget woes, now may be the time to reform some of those longtime targeted policies, said Colleen DiPirro, president of the Amherst Chamber of Commerce, one of Unshackle's partners.

"Some of the reforms on Scaffold Law and workers' comp and Wicks Law are going to be important because without them, it's going to increase the cost of doing business at a time when every business in every industry is going to struggle," DiPirro said. "Policy changes that decrease the cost of doing business are going to be ever more critically important. There's no price for taxpayers or the government to impose these policy changes."

DiPirro said she favors a reduction in pork-barrel spending, but does not support the proposed cuts to education.

"If education is cut at the state level, it will be raised at the local level," she said. "I'm not in favor of transferring liability. I'm in favor of every institution and industry looking at how they can make specific cuts."

Niagara County Legislature Chairman William Ross said the county supports the coalition's agenda.

"Do we like the Unshackle Upstate agenda?" he said. "Certainly, because it's going to lead to economic development, and economic development leads to job growth, and job growth leads to some control of taxes."

Ross said Niagara County benefited this year from brownfield policy reforms, a series of incentives championed by Unshackle Upstate that make it easier to develop brownfields.

Those reforms, combined with a successful political transition at the state level, are the group's key accomplishments in 2008, Rudnick said.

Once recommendations are made to the state government, the next step involves connecting with New York's leaders and the general public, said Parker of the Rochester Business Alliance.

"We will work hard at making the Upstate delegation support spending cuts and getting the word out to citizens in Upstate that these changes needs to occur if we're going to effect real change," she said.