TechVoice spoke with Erik Grimmelmann, executive director of the New York Technology Council (NYTECH), to learn how a small, young and rapidly growing technology council navigates its way through today’s challenging policy and regulatory environment.
What are some of the advocacy efforts you’ve been involved in?
Our involvement in advocacy is relatively new. We’re a young tech council; just four years old. In the past, we’ve attended several of the TechVoice D.C. Fly-Ins, but over the past year we’ve become increasingly involved in advocacy. At the federal level, most of our attention has been focused on immigration reform.
What are some legislation or policies on the horizon in New York that may affect other states in the future?
The biggest thing happening in New York state is a program called Start-Up New York. There are a number of criteria companies need to meet to be eligible, but the benefits are significant. If a company sets itself up in a tax-free zone, it will owe no New York state taxes for 10 years. Many of these zones will be located at state university facilities. One of the goals of the program is to foster innovation across the state. I believe that this will be an experiment that other states will be looking at closely. New York will be giving up some tax revenue to spur growth, but Governor Cuomo and the state legislature believe that the benefits will outweigh the costs. If this program is successful, I’m sure other states will copy it.
One of the issues that affect new companies in New York is the set of rules that govern the formation of limited liability corporations. Those rules are out of date and add unnecessary expense to setting up a business. We’re advocating that these rules change. The rules were put in place in the era of print. We are now in an electronic era and so the costs associated with having notices of the formations of LLC printed are significant and serve no purpose other than to subsidize the print media that publish the notices. Other states have moved with the times and publish notices of the formation of LLCs on a state website.
Can you share a best practice that NYTECH successfully uses to further policy efforts?
Because our resources are limited, our partnership with TechVoice and CompTIA has been very beneficial in helping us understand what the issues are and saves us time in researching the issues. With this assistance, we can add some research on top of what has been provided for us and then put the rest of our time and energy into generating impact.
As NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg leaves office and Bill de Blasio takes his place, what would you hope de Blasio incorporates into his technology policy goals?
Prior to the mayoral primary, we issued a report card on the candidates’ positions on technology. Bill de Blasio and two of his Democratic competitors received A-minuses, the other Democratic competitors got lower grades, and the three Republic candidates received incompletes because none of them had articulated much in the way of a tech policy.
Upon his election, we sent de Blasio an open letter, which was also published online in All Things D. That letter congratulated him and outlined what we thought his technology priorities should be. In addition, we pointed out how tech can help him further his other agenda items. The letter we wrote was picked up by a number of media outlets in New York and led to a number of interviews.
One way in which de Blasio can have the most impact for the least cost is by continuing to do what Bloomberg did, and that is to promote tech in New York to the rest of the country and world. The mayor of New York draws enormous media attention and anything he says is newsworthy. So, if de Blasio continues to promote tech in New York, as Bloomberg did, the world will continue know how hot tech is in the city.
Have you learned anything that has helped you improve your advocacy efforts?
What has made us successful in advocacy is partnering with other groups and organizations and not trying to do all our own research. Being out there is also important. I’ve attended a lot of events and many of them are policy-oriented. I have become known in the policy community as a result. So when something is coming up, someone usually calls me.
Also, keeping our eye on what’s about to happen and being at the right place at the right time is important. We have a unique situation – New York is a large state with a large Congressional delegation that is predominantly Democratic and friendly to technology. We reinforce our key messages with those that are already friendly, including some Republicans, and try and change the minds of those that are less tech-friendly.
The New York delegation is sophisticated and more issue-oriented than partisan-oriented. We work with our senators to help keep them informed and make sure they know our perspective on the issues. For example, Senator Schumer has been active in pushing for patent reform and when we learned that a hearing on potential patent trolling legislation was coming up in the Senate Judiciary Committee, I sent him an email to him and his staffers thanking him for his support and urging him to continue his efforts in the future. It doesn’t hurt to have another email come through right before a hearing. The members of the House and the Senate all want to hear from their constituents and emails make a difference, especially when they arrive at the right time.
It’s also important to work with the media and provide them real content, such as position papers. Currently, I am working on one on immigration reform.
