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November 27, 2006
Buying Tax Breaks
Room 8
For a little mental vacation, here's a bashing of the Empire State Development Corporation that doesn't even mention Atlantic Yards. The editorial by State Senator Liz Krueger illustrates that the quasi-governmental public-private corporation is even worse than we thought, and ought to be the poster child for public authorities reform.
Krueger outlines some of the ESDC's most egregious misdeeds and advocates for reform:
The Syracuse Post-Standard recently reported how "New York state officials allowed a Rochester mall owner to BUY Empire Zone tax breaks while thousands of other state businesses were excluded from the program." The mall owner paid the local community $1.5 million to expand the boundaries of an Empire Zone to include his business. In return, the mall owner is expected to receive more than $14 million in tax breaks over the next ten years, all at the expense of us, the taxpayers. Of course the mall owner argues this was just to stay competitive with another mall owner (Destiny USA) who is expecting even BIGGER tax exemptions—another story, and ANOTHER problem.
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Yet another recent example of blatant mismanagement of Empire Zones was the September 2006 discovery that the ESDC had awarded $22 million in tax breaks to a New Jersey-based company, NRG Energy. In return for $22 million in tax breaks, NRG created one part-time position. The size of this tax break, coupled with the paltry economic benefits that local communities reap, simply fail to justify the use of taxpayer dollars by the ESDC.Some people will look at these decisions and say they reflect new lows in this agency's self-governance. I believe these actions confirm that Governor Pataki's appointees either lack the most basic understanding of the very laws they are charged with implementing, or worse, they simply don't care. The good news is that I fully expect Governor-Elect Spitzer to address this problem post haste.
Posted by lumi at November 27, 2006 10:25 PM