Crains New York - November 12, 2012 - (Page 1)

CRAIN’S NEW YORK BUSINESS ® VOL. XXVIII, NO. 46 opines on Superstorm Sandy’s unlikely hero PAGE 11 JOE LHOTA FOR MAYOR? GREG DAVID WWW.CRAINSNEWYORK.COM NOVEMBER 12-18, 2012 PRICE: $3.00 Fiscal cliff casts dark shadow over city If the nation goes over, New York would be hit harder than other places The most thankless CEO gig in NY bryan smith/zumapress.com BY ANNIE KARNI New York City would fall harder and faster than the rest of the nation if Congress fails to avoid the fastapproaching fiscal cliff—that combination of federal tax hikes and spending cuts set to take effect Jan. 2. The city has long suffered an imbalance in terms of the money its high earners send Washington in the form of taxes and the funds returned as federal services. New Yorkers get about 79 cents for every dollar sent to the capital. The one-two punch of spending cuts and tax hikes would make that imSee FISCAL CLIFF on Page 24 IN THE SPOTLIGHT: Consolidated Edison Chief Executive Kevin Burke THE INSIDER Power. It’s all relative when you run Con Ed a wall showing how many customers still haven’t had electricity restored since Sandy stormed through. By the middle of last week, the number on the wall read 67,000. “That chart shows how many people are mad,” said the 61-year-old chief executive. In some ways, the number was impressively small, considering that a whopping 1 million Con Ed customers had lost power nine days earlier. But as Mr. Burke glanced at the wall, he was already bracing for another See THANKLESS on Page 23 NY Senate shift irks business Democratic victories trigger concerns of Albany dysfunction BY ANDREW J. HAWKINS AND CHRIS BRAGG For a brief two years, Albany seemed to work. Shrugging off its reputation for dysfunction, Gov. Andrew Cuomo and legislative leaders restructured the state’s spending practices and passed a property-tax cap, new income-tax brackets, an ethics bill, same-sex marriage and other landmark legislation. The disciplined Republican Senate majority was Mr. Cuomo’s close partner. But with Democrats gaining an edge in the Senate with election victories last week, business leaders fear a return to the circus-like atmosphere See STATE SENATE on Page 6 BY AARON ELSTEIN Kevin Burke, the man charged with keeping New York’s power flowing, can measure how unpopular he is at any moment with exacting precision. That’s because on the top floor of Consolidated Edison Inc.’s headquarters near Union Square, in a room stocked with employees working the phones, scrutinizing maps and pounding at keyboards, there is a chart on REPORT HEALTH CARE NEWSPAPER How Obamacare could make insurance brokers irrelevant Page 13 THE LIST Largest health insurers Page 16 http://WWW.CRAINSNEWYORK.COM http://www.through.By

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Crains New York - November 12, 2012

THE INSIDER
IN THE BOROUGHS
IN THE MARKETS
BUSINESS PEOPLE
CORPORATE LADDER
OPINION
GREG DAVID
REAL ESTATE DEALS
REPORT: HEALTH CARE
THE LIST
CLASSIFIEDS
SMALL BUSINESS
NEW YORK, NEW YORK
SOURCE LUNCH
OUT AND ABOUT
SNAPS

Crains New York - November 12, 2012