A Bill That Builds Nothing, And Destroys Everything
Albany is charging ahead with a bill that threatens to make New York even more unaffordable than it already is. At a time when families can’t find homes they can afford, when developers are pausing projects due to skyrocketing costs, and when the cost of living continues to outpace wages, lawmakers are seriously considering legislation that would add massive costs to construction and halt progress in its tracks.
This ill-advised proposal (A.6708/S.6378) is being pitched as a labor-friendly bill to expand prevailing wage mandates. In reality, it’s a blunt instrument that will stall housing, kill jobs, gut economic development, and deepen New York’s affordability crisis. It would apply prevailing wage requirements not just to public works, but to a wide range of private projects that receive common economic development incentives; like tax credits, abatements, and low-interest financing. These aren’t giveaways. These are the tools used by struggling communities to attract investment. If they are labeled as “public funds” and attach costly mandates, you eliminate the incentive and the project. You don’t get affordable housing, you don’t get clean energy infrastructure, you don’t get revitalized main streets. You get empty lots and lost opportunity.
The math is not complicated. Prevailing wage mandates can raise construction labor costs by 30% or more. For projects already operating on razor-thin margins, this is a dealbreaker. This bill is designed in such a way that even modest tax benefits or cost reductions would trigger full prevailing wage obligations. It doesn’t take much to trip the wire, but the consequences are immediate and severe: projects canceled, housing pipelines frozen, and jobs lost before they’re ever created.
All of this flies directly in the face of Governor Hochul’s stated agenda. The Governor has spent the last year calling for bold action to address housing supply and affordability. She proposed tax incentives, zoning reforms, and financing tools to unlock more housing development. But none of it will matter if Albany simultaneously passes a law that makes it financially impossible to build. You can’t say you want more homes and then raise the cost of construction. That’s not strategy, that’s sabotage.
Nowhere is this contradiction more dangerous than in Central New York, where Micron is preparing to invest $100 billion to build the largest semiconductor manufacturing campus in U.S. history. This project is expected to create 50,000 direct and indirect jobs, revitalize communities, and transform the region’s economy for generations. That promise hinges on one critical factor, the ability to build. Thousands of new housing units will need to come online. Roads, schools, water systems, commercial space, and workforce infrastructure must follow. If this bill passes, it will make those supporting projects significantly more expensive or impossible to finance, choking off the very development required to accommodate Micron’s growth. This is not a theoretical risk, it’s a real threat to the most important economic opportunity Upstate New York has ever seen. The Legislature should not let short-sighted policy sabotage a once in a century investment. We’ve seen this show before when policies like this are imposed. In Ulster County, a prevailing wage requirement led to an 18-month construction freeze. Yonkers saw their own building activity dry up, until the policy expired, and investment came roaring back. Now lawmakers want to make those same mistakes statewide.
To make matters worse, the bill also dismantles the Public Subsidy Board; the very body the Legislature created to make fair, transparent, case-by-case determinations about when prevailing wage applies to subsidized private projects. That board brings labor, government, and business together to weigh impacts, ensure compliance, and protect common-sense exemptions. It has, and is, working exactly as intended. Eliminating it would replace deliberation with bureaucracy, and oversight with politics.
Construction is already under enormous pressure. Materials costs are up, tariffs are biting, and interest rates are high. Insurance premiums in New York are among the worst in the country. While most other states are adding construction jobs, New York is bleeding them. This bill pours gasoline on the fire and tells the industry to figure it out. It’s not just the industry that suffers. Every delayed or canceled project means fewer homes on the market, higher rents, higher costs for schools and hospitals, and fewer jobs for local workers. It means stalled growth in places that desperately need revitalization. It means fewer options for middle-class families, for young people, for seniors. It means another blow to New York’s fragile competitiveness.
Let’s be clear: opposing this bill is not anti-union. Unions are a vital part of the construction industry in New York. They build our cities, train skilled workers, and uphold quality and safety standards that benefit everyone. But this bill doesn’t protect that legacy, it threatens it. By making projects unaffordable and unbuildable, it eliminates the very work opportunities that sustain union and non-union workers alike. This is not about ideology, it’s about economic reality.
This bill doesn’t build anything. It destroys what’s already working, public-private partnerships, job-creating investments, and smart incentives that help bring costs down. It punishes communities for trying to grow. And worst of all, it does so under the false premise that it helps workers, when in reality, it eliminates the very jobs it claims to protect. New York doesn’t need more barriers, it needs solutions. It needs to make it easier to build, not harder. It needs to put affordability first, not just in speeches, but in legislation.
Lawmakers should reject A.6708/S.6378 without question. If they’re truly serious about affordability, serious about housing, and serious about growth, they’ll stop this bill before the damage is done.
Joseph Alston
Director of Government Affairs
The Business Council of New York State, Inc.
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