Cuomo’s StartUp NY Program Creates a Whopping 76 Jobs, Costs Taxpayers $53 Million
I live in TX and I see these silly StartUp NY commercials all the time. I can't imagine why they think they're going to run commercials in TX and get businesses to move there. Looks like the campaign's not working. I can only assume the ad agency is kicking back money to the pols who authorized this.
Governor Andrew Cuomo was all too proud to unveil his StartUp NY program in the Empire State. They called it a ' game changer.' The ingenious program offered tax-free environments to tech and manufacturing companies for 10 years if they worked with state colleges and universities. It was supposed to boost entrepreneuralism and create thousands of jobs throughout the state. Yet, one year later, the most New Yorkers have to show for it is emptier pockets.
The ubiquitous Start-Up NY promotional campaign has cost taxpayers $53 million since the program's inception in late 2013, while it has led to $1.7 million in private investment so far, state records show.
The state spent $47 million on the ads alone since the program started in December 2013, and the total cost included production expenses and other marketing efforts through last month, according to Empire State Development Corp. In July, the agency said $28 million had been spent on the ads.
To put it in even grimmer perspective, the state has spent $697, 368 per job so far. These grisly numbers come in after the governor made several pledges across the state that jobs were going to start pouring in. Seventy-two in Albany, 123 in Western New York, he said. His promises have been mostly air thus far.
Perhaps even more embarrassing for the governor, however, is the fact that New York has just come in dead last for economic competitiveness, as ranked by The American Legislative Exchange Council.
As many politicians do when their heralded programs don't fare as well they claimed they would, Democrats are coming to StartUp NY's defense and saying it will take more time, two or three years, to truly know whether the investment was worth it. Assemblyman Sean Ryan (D-Buffalo) acnowledges that $53 million in taxpayer money is enough to make New Yorkers gasp, but insists, “What we know is we have the bones of a good program, and we’re trying to build on that.”
One brick at a time, I guess.
townhall.com
It’s not red state vs blue state. It’s city vs country
posted at 11:31 am on April 11, 2015 by Jazz Shaw
As a resident of the upstate portion of New York (not the Big Apple) I have written frequently about the depressing, negative effects which liberal tax and spend policies combined with strangling regulatory burdens have had on the state, as well as the economic death spiral which has followed. Many of the complaints I hear from residents of the more rural, upstate region center on the unbalanced power held by New York City and the complete disconnect between the government and the more conservative, rural communities to the north and west. But even as a person studying and experiencing these effects first hand, I don’t think I ever grasped the full impact of this disparity in the way it’s spelled out by William Tucker of the American Media Institute.
Upstate New York is becoming Detroit with grass.
Binghamton, New York — once a powerhouse of industry — is now approaching Detroit in many economic measures, according to the U.S. Census. In Binghamton, more than 31 percent of city residents are at or below the federal poverty level compared to 38 percent in Detroit. Average household income in Binghamton at $30,179 in 2012 barely outpaces Detroit’s $26,955. By some metrics, Binghamton is behind Detroit. Some 45 percent of Binghamton residents own their dwellings while more than 52 percent of Detroit residents are homeowners. Both “Rust Belt” cities have lost more than 2 percent of their populations.
Binghamton is not alone. Upstate New York — that vast 50,000-square mile region north of New York City — seems to be in an economic death spiral.
The fate of the area is a small scene in a larger story playing out across rural America. As the balance of population shifts from farms to cities, urban elites are increasingly favoring laws and regulations that benefit urban voters over those who live in small towns or out in the country. The implications are more than just economic: it’s a trend that fuels the intense populism and angry politics that has shattered the post-World War II consensus and divided the nation.
That comparison between the city of Binghamton and the wreckage of Detroit is a true eye opener, but it’s not the only such story in the non-city portions of the state. IBM was once the powerhouse of employment in the greater Binghamton area, employing more than 16,000 people as recently as the late 1980s. Today the entire complex has been sold to local developers and the computer giant employs a few hundred people (many of whom are contractors) renting out a tiny portion of the old complex. Kodak employed 62,000 people in Rochester during the same period as IBM’s heyday. Today there are roughly 4,000 workers. Xerox and Bausch & Lomb were also huge employers there but are now largely (or entirely) gone.
These stories are repeated over and over again in cities and towns across the upstate region, so it’s more than coincidence. Tucker ties it all together.
The economic woes of the Empire State trace back to Albany, and a state government that is legendary for its ability to tax and spend. Strict election laws insulate incumbents of both parties, making the state legislature the longest-tenured in the nation. Petitions to put insurgent candidates on the ballot require tens of thousands of signatures and are regularly rebuffed by the courts on technical grounds. Ballot initiatives that have led to tax reform in other states are not permitted. Politicians are protected from voters and have built a spending machine unmatched in virtually any other state. New York, despite its shrinking population, spends more money than all but a handful of states.
The primary example is Medicaid. New York is the only state that forces its cities and counties to help finance Medicaid. As a result, for every dollar appropriated by Albany, Washington contributes two — and New York’s local governments must kick in a fourth.
Pay particular attention to the section on Medicaid highlighted above because it’s a fight which is raging in states across the nation today. The effect here has been nothing short of devastating. From the top down perspective, as Tucker documents, the state of New York spends more than twice as much money on Medicaid as California while serving less than half the number of people. The “revenue sharing” scheme put in place by Democrats from the city has left some places like Chenango County with fully one half of their property tax income going to Albany just to pay for Medicaid. If you think half is bad, Erie County – home to the Buffalo Bills – sends every dime of their property taxes to Medicaid and they are essentially bankrupt.
Returning to the initial premise of this piece, we’re not seeing a red state vs blue state problem here. It’s large, liberal cities run by high spending Democrats using their numeric advantage to pass policies which bleed smaller, more rural areas to death. It takes place in many states other than New York, too. Pennsylvania is a study in two countries, really, with the urban centers of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh constantly at war with the rural land known as “Pennsyltucky” stretching between them. I’m sure you can find more examples in your own back yards.
[ Yes, my home state of IL, a great rural state, run by Cook county crooks. ]
But what is the solution? There have been debates raging for years in the Empire State about finding some way to split off New York City as its own state or allowing portions of upstate to secede and sign on with somebody else. But as long as the cities hold the numerical edge on the votes in the state government, there’s not much that anyone can do. It’s a culture war over a way of life and the economic realities of wildly different societal climates. And there’s no end in sight.
hotair.com
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In New York State it’s not just taxes, state mandates, and Medicaid. Battles also rage over fracking, gun control, carbonphobia, common core, property rights, and creeping cultural Marxism. The whole state would be a dead state walking if it wasn’t for the 1% and Wall Street financial support. Meanwhile, much of upstate turns redder and redder. Every city in New York except New York City is a basket case. De Blasio is hard at work trying to turn New York City in Buffalo.
Viator on April 11, 2015
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New York City residents say they pay most of the taxes and upstate is just a bunch of welfare parasites living off of them. While it is true that upstate in theory gets more back than it pays in, the city ignores a vital fact: It is their mandated policies that keep upstate poor and underdeveloped and makes them an economic dependency. New York City residents oppose mining and drilling with fracking. The New York environmentalists put restrictions on the use of much of the state’s land and natural resources. The New York City left want nuclear power plants and coal power plants closed and this makes electricity too expensive for upstate manufacturing. At one point, there were even proposals to limit water use statewide even though with lake Erie, Lake Ontario and the Niagara River, the upstate region is awash with fresh high quality water supply. It is also the downstate left that insists on the most generous medicaid system in the nation which is bankrupting the upstate.
If more decisions were made at the county level about these matters, upstate could redevelop and thrive; but the downstate left is convinced that the citizens there are just ignorant hillbillies, militiamen and bible thumping ignoramuses who will destroy everything if they are not told what to do and strictly controlled by the educated and sophisticated self-appointed elites who run the state government. Having lived in both areas,it is amazing the degree that the different parts of the state do not understand each other very much and hold cartoonish stereotypes about the other parts.
KW64 on April 11, 2015
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It doesn’t have to be dictatorial in nature. I live in Spokane. Our streets are horrendous (some even altogether unpaved), yet huge portions of the local tax fund keeps being shipped out to Seattle to pay for their mass-transit money-pits. If I had a farm, I’d voluntarily look for someone else (Idaho?) to sell to. Seattle is already eating my ability to produce wealth (and my car’s suspension)- why should they get to eat my produce too? If enough people felt the same way in upstate New York or CA’s Central Valley, the big urban centers would crumble pretty quickly.
Komsomoletz on April 11, 2015
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It is not “right to work” or the Chinese that causes retired or retiring older New Yorkers to move elsewhere. It is the high property taxes, high sales taxes and for many small businesses it is the uncompetitive estate taxes that destroy family businesses. Your comment also makes my prior point about not understanding upstate thinking an motivations. Of course older businesses like Kodak will fade, that is why you must be competitive enough to develop and recruit new ones. The status quo will always die eventually and that probably applies to NY City’s financial advantage. Right now, Pennsylvania counties along NY states border are making $4000 more per capita due to natural gas fracking in the Marcellus Shale than their adjacent counties in NY where fracking is banned. Our electricity manufacturers need is higher cost because of state taxes and mandates. Property tax rates are incredibly out of line with other states and that also discourages new businesses. Our problem is not competing with China so much as it is competing with the other 49 states.
KW64 on April 11, 2015
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These are the effects of the radical left’s efforts to fundamentally transform what they see is a broken, unjust, unfair, misogynistic, racist, bigoted society / nation into their vision of utopia that is centered around their power and control over society and the people who aren’t part of the ‘enlightened elite’.
It’s part of an appeal to the low information and minority classes to grant them power in the effort to ‘right past wrongs’ and ensure ‘fairness’, ‘equality’, and ‘justice’ while punishing those who ‘illegally profited’ from that unfair system called ‘capitalism’ and based on traditional American values.
The thing is, as evidenced in update NY, or the Central Valley of CA, or in Oregon, Washington, DC, the ‘rust belt’ – the left’s vision to establish an utopia doesn’t turn ‘have nots’ into ‘haves’ but creates a bankrupt totalitarian state where the elite rule over the proles… with the left seeing themselves as the elite.
Athos on April 11, 2015
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Some Southern Tier communities over the Marcellus Shale are considering trying to join Pennsylvania where fracking is allowed because it is not in NY.
It would be better if New York State would just allow natural resource decisions to be made at the County level where the consequences are born anyway. Right now the City wants to preserve upstate as a wilderness. Unfortunately, wildernesses do not support very many people.
KW64 on April 11, 2015
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