The state Legislature and Gov. Eliot Spitzer have been working these final weeks of the 2007 session on legislation to mandate paid family leave time.

In the most extreme of the scenarios that have been thrown around, the cost of providing paid leave time would be covered by employers. Such legislation could cripple many businesses in New York and would discourage any new businesses from opening here.

Spitzer has come up with his own proposal that attempts to mitigate the effect on employers, while giving employees a more limited amount of paid family leave compensation. Under his plan, the program would be funded through a 45-cent weekly deduction from employee checks, and there would be a $170 per week cap on how much pay an employee who takes this time off can collect.

We agree that there are times when a limited amount of paid family leave is an appropriate and humane benefit. Severe illness for an immediate relative and the birth of a child are a couple of those times.

But, as harsh as it may sound, there are also times when it becomes too much of a burden on the employer, which also feels a cost and production impact from increased absenteeism.

A worker probably should not, for example, be able to take a parent out of a nursing home and spend time at a retreat in the Adirondacks all while getting paid.

Mandated paid family leave is especially hard on smaller employers. It's much easier for a workplace with hundreds of workers to cover for a colleague out for a few weeks than it is for firms with fewer than 100 people on the payroll.

Lawmakers and the governor should continue working on paid family leave as a tool to make the state a more attractive place to skilled workers.

But they should come up with a better plan to prevent abuse and reduce the disproportionate impact small businesses would feel.