For the first time in several years, the Giuliani administration is allowing applications to create new business improvement districts to go forward.
Administration officials say there hasn't been a moratorium on new BIDs, but City Council officials say no new BID applications have come before the council since the mayor clamped down on BID activities several years ago.
Two proposals that have begun to move through the approval process would create BIDs in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, and the East Side of Manhattan in the 50s and 60s. Two other proposals, one in the Bronx and the other in Manhattan, are also advancing.
Still unclear is whether the mayor will allow the existing 41 BIDs to increase their assessments on local property owners. The mayor has blocked any assessment hikes for the last four years.
RENT RULES
State officials say they are going to revise controversial rent regulations proposed in May that govern 2.4 million renters, most of them in New York City.
The proposed regulations update the state's rent rules to take into account new legislation, including the 1997 rent law, and recent legal interpretations.
Tenants charge the rules would favor landlords and make it easier for owners to implement vacancy decontrol, which ends rent limits on an apartment when a tenant moves out.
Landlords contend that's not true, saying the rules simply codify current regulations.
``The people really harmed by this are attorneys, who made a living off convoluted regulations,'' says Frank Ricci, director of government affairs for the Rent Stabilization Association, the city's major landlord organization.
SPITZER GOES WEST
Attorney General Eliot Spitzer is beginning to look outside New York state to raise money and has an event scheduled in California's Silicon Valley for Dec. 11, at the home of Geoff Yang, chief executive of Redpoint Ventures.
Meanwhile, Mr. Spitzer has let go one of his hired fund-raisers, Robert Haggerty, who once ran the state Senate Republican Campaign Committee and helped the attorney general raise money upstate.
Insiders say there was friction between Mr. Haggerty and Mr. Spitzer's chief fund-raiser, Cynthia Darrison. But the parting between Mr. Spitzer and Mr. Haggerty was said to be friendly, and Mr. Spitzer may bring him back in the future.
SOFTWARE ALLIANCE
New York software companies have formed a new trade group with the help of a $150,000 state grant, courtesy of Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno. The New York State Software Network Association will be based in Troy and will promote industry growth and related high-technology research.
The Manhattan-based New York Software Industry Association will be part of the new group, as will software alliances from western and central New York, the capital region, Hudson Valley and Long Island.
Robert Labanowski, who has promoted technology companies through the Albany Chamber of Commerce and produces a Web site on the technology community, will be executive director. Joseph Magno, an entrepreneur who serves on the boards of several high-tech companies, will be chairman.
ELECTRIC PRICES
The Giuliani administration has asked the federal government to impose a bid cap of up to $250 per megawatt on wholesale electricity prices in New York state to avoid price volatility next summer.
The proposed cap is much lower than the $1,000 bid cap adopted by the New York Independent System Operator earlier this year to control energy prices, but higher than the $150 cap recently imposed by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on California wholesale prices.
HOSPITAL QUALITY
The New York Business Group on Health is planning to tackle quality issues at the region's hospitals.
The group, a nonprofit coalition of 150 businesses in the metropolitan area, is sending a letter to area hospitals asking for information about their quality improvement efforts.
The NYBGH says it is alarmed by reports of errors at the nation's hospitals and by a recent report that ranked New York 31st out of 50 states in the quality of care given to Medicare beneficiaries.
The effort echoes a national initiative by the Leapfrog Group, a consortium of Fortune 500 companies and other large employers. That group hopes to prod hospitals to reduce errors by establishing measures that allow employers to compare hospital performance when buying health insurance.
