New York Labor Law Blamed for Insurance Spike

The New York Sun reports:

New York's construction industry, faced with insurance premiums that have increased by up to a factor of six over the last several years, is trying to convince the state Legislature to amend a labor law that it says has made insurance unaffordable or even unavailable.

"If we were a new company starting up right now, we would not be able to get insurance coverage," the president of 46-year-old construction company McGowan Corporation, Michael McGowan, told The New York Sun. "My insurance agent has told me that point blank."

The law has caused the insurance premiums of those builders who can find coverage to increase three- to six fold, according to the executive vice president of the New York State Builders Association, Philip LaRocque. He said the annual cost of liability insurance for many of the contractors he has worked with had increased to $60,000 from $10,000 three years ago.

"My rates have increased 30% to 50% a year ... for the past 10 years," the president of the home-building and remodeling company McClurg Associates, Scott McClurg, said. Mr. McClurg is also president of the Home Builders Association of Central New York Incorporated.

These costs are passed on to the owner of the building, Mr. LaRocque said, driving up the cost of all new construction in the state.

Read the whole article to find out why costs are artificially high.We can comfortably predict New York state will grow slower than the rest of the nation.They just don't care about job growth.