If Gov. Cuomo really means to make New York “open for business” — as he’s repeatedly said — he needs to pass the word to state agencies.
Starting with the Department of Labor.
That’s the agency that hit the owner of an Albany-area pizzeria with a $5,535 fine — for not providing his workers with enough polo shirts.
Really.
Worse yet, the owner, Christian King, was told that if he tried to appeal the sanction, it would take years because of a backlog — with interest on the fine accruing all the while.
“It’s a gun to your head,” King said he was told by one DOL official.
And that’s only a slight exaggeration.
It’s also not much of an advertisement for a governor who claims to be offering a welcome mat for business investments.
King — whose company owns a number of area businesses — ran head-on into Albany’s fabled wall of senseless over-regulation.
DOL requires that each of his pizza workers be given a fresh shirt each day, even if they only work for a few hours, as several of his employees do.
State labor laws also include mind-numbingly detailed rules on which worker uniforms must be dry-cleaned and which can go straight into the wash.
And there’s an entire section governing “uniform maintenance” pay.
But as ridiculous as all this is, it’s the inability of small-business owners like King to effectively contest such fines that is truly infuriating.
Which is why Assemblyman Bob Reilly (D-Albany County) told a local paper that he’ll propose a bill setting up an independent process to let small businesses and nonprofits contest agency fines expeditiously.
But it shouldn’t take legislation to make that happen.
If the governor truly wants to make the state business-friendly, he’s the one who has to ensure that there’s no pit beneath the welcome mat.