One and a half million New Yorkers have left our state since 2000, more than any other state. They left mainly because of the lack of job opportunities caused by high taxes and high electric, workers’ compensation and Medicaid costs.

In order to overcome these cost disadvantages and compete for economic development projects, municipalities in New York use their industrial development agencies to lower this tax burden in an effort to level the playing field and encourage businesses to invest and create jobs. Too often, though, New York is eliminated from consideration as an investment location because of the very high cost of doing business here.

Now, legislation sponsored by Assemblyman Sam Hoyt and Sen. Antoine Thompson, both Buffalo Democrats, and another measure proposed by Gov. David A. Paterson, would make things even worse. These proposals would impose job-killing wage mandates on the construction of most industrial development agency-financed projects, as well as the permanent jobs they create.

These prevailing-and living-wage requirements would add between 30 percent and 45 percent to the cost of an IDA project; far more than an IDA can provide as an incentive. What business would pay a 35 percent wage penalty in order to receive a 15 percent benefit from an IDA?

And, as if that is not bad enough, Hoyt and Thompson have already stopped more than $2.3 billion in nonprofit projects from getting low-cost IDA financing in order to leverage their union wage legislation. Affected projects include nursing homes, hospitals, charter schools, housing for the mentally disabled and cerebral palsy centers.

The Hoyt-Thompson legislation is being championed by powerful New York City labor unions in an effort to gain a bigger foothold upstate.

We know what the outcome would be if these wage requirements were enacted. Last week, for example, the New York City Council killed the Kingsbridge Armory project, which would have created 2,000 jobs in the Bronx. At the urging of the same unions pushing the Hoyt-Thompson legislation, the council rejected the project because it did not include a “living wage” requirement for permanent jobs.

Three years ago, Ulster County established a prevailing-wage requirement for all IDA-financed projects. During the two years the wage mandate was in place, not a single application was submitted to the IDA. Within two months after the county repealed the requirement, three projects were approved.

During this deep global economic recession, Paterson and legislators, including Hoyt and Thompson, should seek ways to reduce obstacles to growth, not create new ones. The political strength of powerful downstate special interests should not trump the interests of the vast majority of New Yorkers.

Brian McMahon is executive director of the New York State Economic Development Council.