The New York state office of the national Federation of Independent business (NFIB) has set state legislative goals for this year that include regulatory relief, mandate relief, and allowing companies to extract natural gas through hydraulic fracturing.

The NFIB’s legislative goals follow a year that the group said was good for small business. The state made progress on spending controls, property taxes, and energy costs in 2011, the business organization said.

“The list of achievements for the business community was impressive this year,” NFIB New York Director Mike Durant said in a news release. “There are some big obstacles remaining, and unless the state keeps its commitment, we’ll end up back where we started.”

In 2012, New York state government should provide regulatory relief and mandate relief for small businesses, according to the NFIB. Legislators should reform workers’ compensation and unemployment insurance, the organization said.

The NFIB also wants lawmakers to follow an agenda known as “Let NY Work.” That agenda — which is endorsed by a coalition of business, school, and municipal groups — is designed to alleviate state mandates placed on schools, municipalities, and taxpayers. Easing those mandates will help keep local and state taxes under control, the NFIB said.

Let NY Work measures include acting to make the pension system more affordable, establishing minimum health-insurance contribution levels for employees and retirees, and reducing construction costs on public/private projects.

Finally, the NFIB said the state should issue permits in 2012 that will allow companies to extract natural gas using hydraulic fracturing, or hydrofracking. Gas extraction will create jobs, reduce energy costs, boost small businesses, and generate state and local revenue, NFIB contends.

“It will create tens of thousands of jobs in New York and thousands of business opportunities for our residents,” Durant said.

The NFIB is a small-business association with offices in Washington, D.C. and all 50 state capitals. The organization says it aims to help small and independent business owners speak out on public policies that influence their businesses.

EAST SYRACUSE — The longtime owner of East Syracuse Chevrolet wanted his employees to have a future at the automobile dealership when he sold the business at the end of 2011.

“The first, most important thing is that I could feel comfortable about my employees having a future here,” says Sidney M. Greenberg, who has been dealer-operator of East Syracuse Chevrolet since 1982. The dealer-operator owns the business and is the dealer of record for Chevrolet. 

Greenberg sold the dealership to 25-year East Syracuse Chevrolet employee Gino Barbuto in a deal that closed Dec. 29 (which we reported on cnybj.com that day). Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Barbuto had been an operating partner, owning 15 percent of the dealership since 2010. He has been its general manager since 2009, and has been discussing an ownership change with Greenberg for about five years.

“I am not a youngster,” says Greenberg, who did not specify his age. “It came to me that when I got ready to pack it in, [Barbuto] was the guy. [I wanted to do] more than just sell it to some stranger and walk away.”

Greenberg, who started working at East Syracuse Chevrolet in 1949 before becoming dealer-operator in 1982, does not plan to walk away. Barbuto has guaranteed him a place at the dealership in the future, he says.

“I’ve never prepared myself for retirement, and I wouldn’t like the retired life,” Greenberg says. “And I have been assured by Gino that I will always have a place to come.”

Greenberg will likely fill a consulting role at the dealership, says Barbuto, who was first hired at the dealership in 1986 as a service adviser. Since then, he has held a variety of roles, becoming service manager in 1992 and new-car manager in 1998. Barbuto also held the position of used-car sales manager before taking over as general manager in 2009.

Barbuto is now East Syracuse Chevrolet’s dealer-operator. His acquisition of the dealership gave him all of its stock and assets, including its 65,000-square-foot facility at 1 Chevy Drive in East Syracuse, which opened in 1986. That facility and its land are valued at $2.2 million, according to records from the Onondaga County Office of Real Property Tax Services.

In addition, Barbuto also acquired the dealership’s stock of vehicles. East Syracuse Chevrolet currently has about 280 new cars and 120 used cars in stock, he says.

Barbuto does not plan any major operational changes at the dealership. He does want to expand the business, though.

At the end of last year, East Syracuse Chevrolet was on pace to have sold about 1,500 new and used vehicles in 2011, Barbuto says. He expected revenue for the year to total $45 million. 

In 2012, Barbuto would like to increase revenue by 5 percent. He also wants to expand East Syracuse Chevrolet’s used-car business, but he did not provide any used-car sales estimates.

“It’s an exciting time,” Barbuto says. “We’re actually looking to add a few more employees if we hit our sales targets.”

The dealership currently employs 77 full-time workers and 1 part-time worker. It could add between three and seven employees in the next year if sales are strong, Barbuto says. Plans for adding new employees in different departments are not final, but they would not all be sales staff members, he says.

Starting in March, East Syracuse Chevrolet will undergo a series of renovations, Barbuto says. It will receive a new façade and showroom upgrades, as well as a new business center.

The renovations are being coordinated by Detroit–based General Motors (NYSE: GM), Chevrolet’s parent company, according to Barbuto. General Motors has hired the global architecture, design, planning, and consulting firm Gensler to design the upgrades, which will make the dealership “image compliant” with other General Motors dealers, he says.

“I think it’ll give us a fresh look,” Barbuto says. “We’ll be here a long time to come.”

Final plans for the upgrades have not been approved, and no contactor has been selected to carry out the work, according to Barbuto. He did not have a cost estimate for the project.

Greenberg and Barbuto did not use a broker in the East Syracuse Chevrolet sale. Syracuse–based Green & Seifter Certified Public Accountants, PLLC handled accounting, Barbuto says.                       

SYRACUSE  — Anita Zannin wanted a different kind of job, so she started her business in blood three years ago.

“I did not want to do the traditional lab all day,” says Zannin, the owner and founder of AZ Forensic Associates, LLC. “I was looking for something else I could do.”

AZ Forensic Associates specializes in bloodstain-pattern analysis. The company analyzes bloodstains scientifically, which can lead to the stains being used as evidence in trials.

The firm’s evaluations have been used in criminal and civil cases, and Zannin is often called to testify as an expert witness when a case goes to trial. She says she works on cases around the country and has also been a part of cases in Canada and Europe.

The number of cases AZ Forensic Associates handles at one time varies based on their complexity. Zannin, who is the company’s only employee, sometimes works on one or two cases at a time but has juggled as many as 12 at once. 

Clients typically find AZ Forensic Associates through word of mouth. The business’s reputation is buoyed by the fact that Zannin studied under Herbert Leon MacDonell and became his associate. MacDonell is known as a father of bloodstain-pattern analysis, she says.

Zannin founded AZ Forensic Associates in 2009 and operates the company from a 200-square-foot office in her home. She believes the business will grow strongly in the next eight to 10 months, but declined to share any revenue totals or estimates.

“Being that it’s a new business, it’s still in the startup phase,” she says. “There are a lot of opportunities that seem to be coming in.”

Just 20 percent of AZ Forensic Associates’ cases go to trial, Zannin estimates. The rest are resolved before they go to court through plea bargains or other settlements.

AZ Forensic Associates will work for a range of parties in the legal system, including prosecutors, defense attorneys, and private citizens. Cases do not have to be new for the company to take them on, Zannin says.

“I can get involved at any point in a case,” she says. “It can be a new case that hasn’t gone to the prosecution yet. Or it can be a case that’s old.”

Zannin says she’s worked on cases that are as many as 30 years old. In some situations, she has to examine evidence from photographs and documents. In others, she can visit a crime site to perform evaluations.

“Sometimes the visit is simply for me to get a feel for the physical layout that you don’t get from the photographs and diagrams,” she says. “Other times it’s to see the actual evidence.”

AZ Forensic Associates specializes in services beyond on-scene evaluations and bloodstain- pattern analysis. It also offers evidence collection, evidence examination, photography, case review, crime-scene reconstruction, and presumptive testing.

Parties who hire the company should be prepared for the possibility that its evaluation will not back their side in a case, Zannin says.

“After I evaluate it, it’s not necessarily a good result for the person that’s retained me,” she says. “The evidence is the evidence, regardless of who I’m retained by.”

AZ Forensic Associates is also involved in education, from lectures to seminars and workshops. For example, Zannin has helped teach 40-hour bloodstain pattern interpretation courses in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. and Parma, Italy. Courses draw a range of attendees, including crime-scene investigators, attorneys, pathologists, students, and teachers, she says.

Zannin, an adjunct forensics professor at Syracuse University, is used to teaching. She heads classes for both graduates and undergraduate students at the university, she says.

AZ Forensic Associates, LLC takes on some of her graduate students as interns. The number of interns at the company varies depending on its caseload, but it has had a maximum of three interns in the past, Zannin says. Interns often travel to different states as Zannin looks at crime scenes or testifies.