Quinn Discusses Taxes, Health Care With LICBDC
BY THOMAS COGAN

Quinn said that a fine example of affordable health care is provided by the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce's Brooklyn HealthWorks, which was launched four years ago for borough businesses with employee populations between one and 50. She said a similar plan is being tried in Queens, and then perhaps the rest of the city.

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn addressed the April breakfast meeting of the Long Island City Business Development Corporation, held at the Water's Edge restaurant. After getting an introduction from Councilmember Eric Gioia, Quinn discussed taxation, health care and other matters of interest to small businesses in the city.

Believing that the economic downturn is no mere rough patch but an outright recession, Quinn said that while New York City would enter the recession period later than the nation in general, it would emerge from it later, too. The city's deficit-to-surplus-to-deficit cycle during the terms of Mayor Michael Bloomberg is indication of the difficult time ahead. But it's not as though businesses didn't have financial problems anyway and, she said, the council has tried to be of help. Last June, it passed an increase in the unincorporated business tax credit and now is trying to ease the way of S-Corporations, which have to pay both city and state taxes. Trying to plead exemption from state taxes in the legislature in Albany is no easy thing, but the city tries. When in Albany last year, she heard not only of S-Corporations but also a lot about health care, which small businesses were saying they couldn't afford to finance. Quinn said that a fine example of affordable health care is provided by the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce's Brooklyn HealthWorks, which was launched four years ago for borough businesses with employee populations between one and 50. She said a similar plan is being tried in Queens, and then perhaps the rest of the city.

Among the questioners, Dan Jacoby asked about the possibility of local control of tax rights. Quinn said reforms that came out of the fiscal crisis of the 1970s, particularly the mandate for a balanced budget, put the city under severe restrictions. Some of them are due to expire at the end of June, she said, but she favors continuation of the fiscal control board and the compulsory balanced budget. Another mandate that isn't sufficiently obeyed, she believes, is the one requiring municipal bodies such as the Housing Authority to file regular reports, which are more likely to be issued irregularly. She also complained that all the mayors have developed a talent for sleight of hand involving long-term and short-term debt that inevitably develops false economic pictures. She skirted the slush fund issue when speaking about paying down the debt, which she said is always salutary but should provide some sort of rainy day money to be available for emergencies. A now bill in Albany would provide such a funding system.

She spoke of local amenities that could be improved. She said that as a resident of Manhattan's West Side, she has heard several neighbors tell her that when they take airplanes from and back to New York, they use Newark Airport, since it is easier to get to than the airports in Queens. "That should change," she said, meaning that La Guardia and Kennedy Airports should be made more accessible and appealing to all- so that, she added with mock snobbery, "we don't have to rely on New Jersey!" One transportation outlet she sees burgeoning is ferry service in all five boroughs, not only for businessmen who pay a high price for it but for all. Ferry service from the Rockaways to the mainland begins soon, and she looks forward to it. When one man in the audience, calling himself "one of a shrinking minority," asked how he and his fellow Queens businesspersons could fend off extinction because of residential zoning laws, she told him that all of them must demand manufacturing tax credits and protective zoning for manufacturing.

Other officials besides Quinn and Gioia in attendance at the breakfast were City Councilmember Peter Vallone Jr. and Deputy Borough President Karen Koslowitz, a former councilmember. Vallone paid Quinn an unchallengeable compliment, calling her "one of the three best City Council speakers we have ever had."