Capital: Albany. State bird: bluebird. State flower: Rose. State motto: "Pay toll."

[captainsblog]

Gee. Now WHO could we be talking about here?

I'm not one of those Ron Paulistas who oppose all forms of government regulation. Safety, consumer protection, reasonable collective bargaining provisions are fine with me. Yet here are three stories of Good Government Gone Wrong that make me a little more sympathetic to the cries of the corporatists.



These days, I not only work for myself, but in terms of organization, I work by myself. Nobody's on the payroll, and thus I am spared endless aggravation about payroll, workers comp and a dozen other things.

Make it a dozen and one, though: New York State recently passed an evil beast with a well-intentioned name: the Wage Theft Prevention Act, apparently enacted because a small number of sweatshop operators were keeping their employees in the dark about whether they're being paid the right amount.  As usual, though, the state went about killing a flea with an elephant gun. Instead of focusing on the small, cash-paying businesses that were causing the trouble, they mandated that every employer, including the 90-plus percent who provide regular pay stubs, comply with this annual regulatory nightmare of telling every employee what they earn, and making them all sign and return the form, subject to penalties and lawsuit exposure from the employees if they don't.

Why do I care? Because my church is an employer, including of several part-time Sunday morning babysitters who don't work every week.  And since I'm now in charge of the staff parish liasoning, I've been tasked with tracking them down so we won't get audited or sued.

Sigh.





As if that isn't enough, this morning brought another tale of the Labor Department going batshit insane over regulations that, if they ever made sense, don't in this context: they fined an Albany-area pizzeria $5,500 because it didn't provide polo shirts to its employees.

Wait, that can't be right. Actually, it's not: the pizzeria did provide polo shirts to all of its employees. Just not enough:

Late last year, staff from the state Department of Labor came in for a multi-day audit of his pizza business. They spent a few days going through files, pay records and other data and gave him their seal of approval.

"We were actually lauded for how good our records are," said King.

But then the inspector had some bad news: King wasn't providing enough golf shirts to employees.

If they work five days a week, for example, employees are supposed to get five shirts — even if they work just a few hours per day.

Then King was told he'd have to pay $5,535 — with most of the money sliced up among his 35 pizza store employees.

The story goes on to report how the department is so backlogged in their appeals process, there's little incentive to challenge shit like this, since interest on the fine just tacks on to infinity and beyond if you fight and ultimately lose.

Sigh sigh.





I drove a client to court yesterday, and she noticed the package on the seat when she got in the car. It contained our two EZ-Pass transmitters, which the Thruway people, in their infinite wisdom, decided were now obsolete and needed to be replaced.

That part, I have no problem with. This part, more so:

You must return your old tags within 15 days of receiving your new Tag or be charged the lost tag fee of $23.00.

Back the tape up. "Your tag may not work anymore, so we're going to charge you if you don't return it."

Ah, but maybe they're worried about having too many tags out there, right? Wrong:

If your old tag is not returned, it will be deactivated and will not operate in any toll gate. If you attempt to use a deactivated tag at MTA Bridges and Tunnels facilities, the gate will remain down and you will be required to pay the full toll in cash. At other EZ-Pass facilities, use of a deactivated tag will cause you to receive violations.

So, unlike, I don't know, CREDIT CARDS, where you get a new one periodically and then just destroy the old one, they're turning this into a cash cow for the system.

The best part of all, though? Came when the client asked what would happen if it got lost in the mail on the way back to them. "I'd be charged for it, of course," I answered. "Now, to avoid that, I could return them in person to our local EZ-Pass service center, but due to budget cuts, there's only one of those in the entire state this side of Syracuse."

It's on Grand Island.

Where the only way to get to it is to go over a bridge on the 190 and, you guessed it, pay a toll.

Sigh sigh sigh. Which rhymes with Why? Why? Why?

Comments

[firynze]

Crap like this makes me really glad my father finally retired.

[glenmarshall.livejournal.com]

Government record keeping is, at best, annoying.

I'm a self-employed contractor, working on a US government project. We recently had a perfectly complete project milestone delayed because some ass-hat changed the template form for a required document and then did not distribute the new template nor inform anyone whose work was in progress using the old template. We had to escalate to the powers-that-be to even get a status and reason for the delay.