The Westchester County Association hopes to enlist 1,000 persons in its newly launched Call to Action campaign to shake up Albany”™s entrenched political culture and spend-and-borrow habits and reverse the exodus of businesses and taxpaying residents from the state.
“It”™s important that we stand up as a community and we say together to the rest of the world, to elected legislators, that we want change,” WCA President William M. Mooney Jr. said at a campaign press conference timed to coincide with deadline day for income tax filers.
Mooney said the WCA is allied in the movement to save Westchester”™s and the state”™s economic viability with other business advocacy groups that include the Long Island Association, Rochester-based Unshackle Upstate and the National Federation of Independent Business.
“It”™s no longer acceptable, the culture of spending and the way New York has spent,” said WCA Chairman Alfred DelBello. He said high taxes have had a “tremendous” impact on business and have driven the loss of 1.5 million citizens from the state over eight years.
In the 2006-2007 fiscal year alone, the population exodus from New York took away $4.5 billion in taxpayer income, according to the WCA”™s recently launched campaign website, www.CalltoActionCampaign.org.
For out-of-state companies looking to relocate, New York and Westchester County are no longer on the radar screen, DelBello said. In Westchester, once an attractive choice for companies moving their corporate headquarters, “We don”™t even know how many businesses we lose because they don”™t even come in the door anymore,” he said.
WCA officials said they will reach out to organizations, companies and individuals to mobilize in the campaign. “It is not just a campaign for business people,” Mooney said. “Everybody is fed up.”
Campaign organizers have scheduled a Call to Action rally for 5:30 p.m. May 20 at the Hilton Rye Town in Rye Brook at which they hope to draw at least 1,000 demonstrators.
On its campaign website, the WCA has started a countdown to the November election day. All 212 state Legislature seats are up for election this fall.
For incumbents who ignore or dismiss their call for change, the business activists aim to make polling day a sendoff to political retirement.
