Sunday, January 3, 2010

New Laws for the New Year

Approximately one dozen new laws took effect January 1 in New York State. These laws include the following:
# S.66026/ A.40026: Provides retirement benefits for new entrants to certain public retirement systems;
# S.5472-A/A.8402-A: Enhances consumer and provider protections by instituting a series of managed care reforms through limitations on denial of claims for pre-authorized health care services; relates to grievance procedures; relates to managed care health insurance contracts; relates to determinations involving urgent care by utilization review agents.
# S.8376-A/A.11752: Relates to identity theft, protection of sensitive personal information, employee personal identifying information and crime of unlawful possession of a skimmer device.
# S.8715/A.11759: Establishes clear rules for determining when livery drivers in New York City, Westchester and Nassau Counties are employees or independent contractors of livery bases, and creates a fund to give independent contractor livery drivers workers’ compensation benefits in certain circumstances where no-fault automobile insurance does not provide any or sufficient coverage.
# S.2810/A.1001: Authorizes the use of titles, initials or abbreviations of names as signatures on absentee ballots.
# S.56-B /A.156-B: Enacts Part QQ, Sections 1 and 2: To amend the workers’ compensation law, in relation to calculation of assessments.
# S.57-B/A.157-B: Enacts Part Z, Sections 2-a and 3-a: To amend the social service law, in relation to the pass-through, disregard and assignment of support for persons applying for or in receipt of public assistance, and collection of a twenty-five dollar annual service fee for child support enforcement services furnished to certain persons receiving such services.
# S.58-B/A.158-B: Enacts Part C, Section 27: To amend the public health law, in relation to payment by governmental agencies for general hospital inpatient services,
# S.522/A.1559: Requires a board of elections in a city of over one million to provide the same information in Russian that it provides in languages other than English.
# S.3330/A.8088: Adds providers of voice over internet protocol service (VOIP) to current standards.
# S.4135-A/A.6718-B: Removes excess barriers to dental residencies and permit dental residents to take the mandated dental ethics training course during the period of their residency.
# S.8122/A.10979: Exempts State-chartered credit unions from the special additional mortgage recording tax


The full text of each law may be found here.

If you believe that any of these laws may impact you or your business, you may wish to contact an attorney to review the legislation and advise you as to your responsibilities and rights under the statute.