Like everybody else, Long Island business owners in general and the Long Island building community in particular will pay close attention to the Governor’s budget message this morning. Here are some thoughts we have on the matter.

• New York State government should strive to "do more with less" as the thousands of NYS businesses dealing with this economic crisis have done already.

• Raising prices is not an option for us, so increasing the already onerous tax burden on NYS residents and business owners should not be an option for the state. We do support such creative measures as expanding the number of venues where wine can be sold and blocking the sale of untaxed cigarettes to non-Native Americans.

• A more efficient and effective NYS - i.e. taking less time to approve permits -- would mean more business activity, which in turn generates more tax revenues. One of my developers had to wait 10 weeks to get the permits he needed for a development and it almost cost him the deal. That's tens of thousands of dollars in tax revenues that were delayed and almost lost.

• The Governor has vowed to re-visit DEC regulations that are un-enforceable because of a lack of manpower and other programs that inhibit the development process. This would be helpful.

• The Governor should re-visit well-intentioned but flawed land preservation practices that take huge chunks of property off the property tax rolls. Rather than purchase whole blocks of land and rendering them sterile, for instance, it should allow a portion of that land to be developed with higher densities than currently allowed so that the developer can contribute the unused portion of that land back to the community at no charge to the taxpayer.

Nice Work If You Can Get It

One look at the news of the day and you have a much better understanding of why things are in such bad shape.

For starters, according to published reports a NYS Parole Board commissioner and former NYS Assemblyman was charged yesterday with trying to lure two pre-teen sisters to an Albany-area hotel room for sex. If that isn't bad enough - and it is pretty bad - the man gets paid $102,000 a year for his part-time work on the Parole Board. Think about that the next time you sign a check to the New York State Tax Department.

And just to add insult to injury, the top brass at AIG were at it again. Four top AIG executives spent $86,000 on a partridge hunt at an English country manor as the feds gave their struggling firm billions to stay afloat, according to a story in the New York Daily News.

What a better place the world would be if we all just stuck to doing an honest day's work for an honest dollar.