The state AFL-CIO is taking its industrial development agency reform campaign to the airwaves.

Starting Monday, radio ads paid for by the union will start airing on New York stations, says an item from the Albany Times Union website.

Here's the deal: this year's regular session of the State Legislature ends this month. So the unions are trying to ratchet up public pressure on legislators to pass some sort of IDA reform.

The issues - as seen by labor, activists, politicians - are the same as always. When a company receives IDA benefits and doesn't live up to job promises, it should have to pay back any tax breaks or other incentives it received, they say. Jobs should be filled with local workers. Employees, both construction workers and the people that work day-in-day-out for the company, should get prevailing wages. And the IDA's should operate in a transparent manner.

Meanwhile, local state legislators are back at it again, pushing bills that would reform industrial development agencies. So what's the holdup?

Friday, Republican Senator Joe Robach and a representative from Democratic Assembly member Susan John's office stood in front of the Rochester Plaza Hotel and urged the passing of reform legislation.

What wasn't clear was why they chose Friday. Neither was introducing new legislation. John sponsored some legislation, but the Assembly already passed it. Robach's been pushing a bill introduced by Republican Senator George Maziarz . It's been around since at least 2006.

"I think we could pass the Maziarz bill, but the Assembly bill doesn't match," Robach said after the press conference. Three-way negotiations are going on between the governor, the Assembly, and the Senate, he said. The goal is to produce a bill they can all agree on, which has always been the sticking point.

Will this be the year IDA reform legislation gets passed? A lot of people would like to see it happen.  In big election years, and this is one for sure, stranger things have happened. But history says it won't - that it will succumb to an old-fashioned Albany stalemate.