Coalition members, including the Rochester Business Alliance, fear for the long-term devastating impact the budget will have on New York taxpayers and businesses.

Unshackle Upstate, a widespread coalition of business and trade organizations, today voiced its disgust with the recently passed state budget, saying the high-tax, high-spending plan will seriously hamper recovery from the recession, and make the state even less competitive in the national marketplace for jobs.

Even more disappointing than the budget itself, coalition leadership said, was the secretive process used to develop it, a process that excluded important debate on how the budget will have a devastating impact on the state's economy and its taxpayers.

"To say we are disappointed is a gross understatement," said Brian Sampson, the coalition's executive director. "By insisting on closed door negotiations, Governor Paterson, Speaker Silver and Majority Leader Smith basically told every resident of the state that they don't care how high your taxes are, or how worried you are about your financial future, as long as they can avoid making tough decisions that might anger certain segments of the community."

"They talked about 'shared pain,' but by avoiding those tough spending decisions, all these elected officials did was prolong everyone's pain, and make it tougher for New York to recover from this nationwide recession," Sampson said. "Under no circumstances should anyone forget what they did to us with this budget."

Unshackle Upstate, a coalition of 75 business and trade organizations, has long criticized the budget agreement, saying its 9 percent increase perpetuates Albany leadership's long addiction to overspending. Instead of making long-term structural changes to the state budget and costly programs like Medicaid, the leadership chose the path of least resistance, attempting to tax its way out of the budget crisis. A clear example of this decision-making is the increase in the personal income tax system that will negatively affect small businesses, 75 percent of which pay their business taxes through the personal income tax system.

"Everyday households and businesses statewide are reducing spending, making sacrifices, saving for emergencies and planning for long term survival," said Lou Santoni, CEO of the Greater Binghamton Chamber of Commerce. "How do their elected officials reward them? With a slap in the face - $10 billion is additional spending - which has to be paid for by already overstretched businesses and families whose taxes are being raised to support this fiscal irresponsibility. That is simply intolerable."

Unshackle Upstate's concerns about the budget are being voiced by others as well. State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said in a statement that the budget his fellow Democrats passed is merely a stop-gap measure and not a "long-term" solution to the state's problems.

"The State Comptroller, a former Assembly member, has said that this is a 'buy time' budget that only postpones and increases our fiscal pain," said Garry Douglas, president of the Plattsburgh-North Country Chamber of Commerce. "The stimulus money needed to be used as an opportunity to implement long overdue reforms in things like Medicaid, education, and the state pension system, but it wasn't. It was used to increase spending and to preserve dysfunctional systems, creating a time bomb two years from now. We have to insist that they refocus on the reform needs of this state."

Unshackle had been supportive of several aspects of the Governor's budget proposal which they believed would help the state. Those included changes to the Wick's Law and a proposal to create a Tier 5 pension system which, according to the Division of Budget, would have saved the state a projected $48.5 billion over the next 30 years. But the idea was scrapped because, according the Governor, "...the unions did not like the proposal..."

"Elimination of the Tier 5 program is just another indication that good legislation that can save taxpayers billions of dollars just gets pushed off for later discussion because of special interest groups," said Sandy Parker, president and CEO of the Rochester Business Alliance. "If you are going to increase costs, then you also need to find ways to cut costs. And unfortunately this budget has nothing but spending increases."

"The Governor and Legislative Leaders have unfairly taken money from the hard-working, tax-paying families to continue Albany's free-spending and free-wheeling ways," said Andrew Rudnick, CEO of the Buffalo Niagara Partnership. "They have callously rolled the dice on a guaranteed losing wager with the State's economic future on the line, hoping that a national economic recovery will wash it all away and conceal the damage they have done. It's an irresponsible gamble that leaves our fragile Upstate economy even more vulnerable than it was a day ago."

"We just have to wonder where this bad budget will leave us two, three years from now," said Darlene Kerr, CEO of the Greater Syracuse Chamber of Commerce. "These new increases we fear will actually lower tax revenues because businesses flee and force the Legislature to come back to the table to balance the budget. The Governor has already indicated he has concerns. I wonder where they plan to get the new money to balance the budget. Because they've clearly already taxed us too much."

The Unshackle Upstate coalition represents more than 45,000 employers and more than 1.5 million workers in every region of Upstate. The coalition's website www.unshackleupstate.com provides a direct way for citizens to send a message to elected officials in Albany.