What a whiner. City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito is complaining because Florida Gov. Rick Scott touts his state’s benefits over New York to lure firms.
Hmm. Maybe the council should stop giving companies reasons to head south.
New York has “neither the need nor the time” for Scott’s “trade mission,” huffed the speaker, slamming his visit this week to pitch Florida to financial firms. Scott should “look elsewhere to steal jobs.”
Why? Florida has plenty of selling points over New York. For starters, no personal income tax, estate tax or capital gains tax.
New York’s top city-state total income tax rate is 12.7 percent, one of the nation’s highest. The Tax Foundation ranks Florida fifth-best for business. The Empire State? Fifth-worst.
Meanwhile, Mark-Viverito and her members have been saddling firms with even more onerous requirements, from paid sick leave to whom they can hire, and backing ever-higher minimum wage laws.
“Officials in New York are not focused on how you build jobs,” Scott told The Post. “The facts are horrible for New York.”
He says his state’s “in the business of growing opportunity for families, not growing government,” and wants “you to keep more of the money you make, because we understand it’s your money.”
No wonder Florida passed New York as the third-most-populous state last year. And no wonder, Scott notes, New York lost $80 billion in income from 1992 to 2013, with Florida the top destination of those who fled.
Mark-Viverito’s hardly to blame for all New York’s woes — but her thinking is: She’s been pro-tax and anti-business virtually all her political life.
If the speaker wants to blame someone for New York’s decline, hand her a mirror.