Tag: Economy

Jun 27

2024

Hochul, Schumer pressured regulators over STAMP

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Editor’s note: This is the first of a two-part package. Our second story is here. In the drive to build a massive industrial park in rural Genesee County, the offices of Gov. Kathy Hochul and U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer pressured regulators to issue approvals for the project that ran afoul of environmental laws and policies, ignoring an indigenous nation’s legal rights along the way. Investigative Post found that: Aides to Hochul pushed top officials at the state Department of Environmental Conservation to work more quickly. Schumer aides intervened with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. And a string of state[...]

Posted 7 months ago

Jun 12

2024

A mixed bag on IDA reform in Albany

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New York State Sen. Sean Ryan.  The push to reform New York’s industrial development agencies gained significant momentum this year, but not enough to net a serious win for the coalition of labor unions, teachers and good government groups backing the effort. Smaller measures, however, did make it over the finish line, including one expanding representation on IDA boards and another increasing transparency over agency projects. “The momentum is building and we’re going to continue to build that momentum,” said state Sen. Sean Ryan of Buffalo. “But the community itself is building it.” IDAs, of which there are 107 across[...]

Posted 7 months ago

Jun 3

2024

Numbers dispute the claims of a WNY renaissance

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Some numbers caught my eye in the new edition of the WNY Economic News produced by economic professors at Canisius University.  And I quote: National payroll employment has surpassed its pre-COVID peak by more than 7 million jobs while WNY employment is more than 12,000 below its pre-COVID peak.  As they have been since the late 1980s, wages for workers in the Buffalo MSA [metropolitan statistical area] are lower than wages for workers in most industries in the United States. Thus, it should not be a surprise that the most recent data for the Buffalo MSA shows that the average wage[...]

Posted 7 months ago

May 27

2024

Americans are horribly misinformed on the economy

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Subscribe to WeeklyPost and you’ll receive Jim Heaney’s recommended reading Sunday mornings in your inbox. We’re a nation that watches football, obsessives over Taylor Swift and can’t stop staring at our phone screens. Paying attention to reality, not so much. A poll released last week showed most Americans are horribly misinformed over the state of the economy, which in turn is coloring their views on national politics.  Consider: A majority say we’re in a recession; we’re not. Most say unemployment is at a record high; it’s actually near a 50-year low.  A majority say inflation is rising; it’s decreasing. Most[...]

Posted 8 months ago

May 23

2024

Harris Beach, Hodgson Russ profiting off IDAs

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A meeting of the Erie County IDA board of directors. Photo by Garrett Looker. When New York’s industrial development agencies grant tax breaks, it’s not just local companies that benefit — two upstate law firms walk away with major paydays, too. Hodgson Russ and Harris Beach — based in Buffalo and the Rochester area, respectively — earn millions of dollars in fees each year, according to research from the watchdog groups Reinvent Albany and Good Jobs First. That report comes on the heels of state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli’s annual IDA report, also released Wednesday. The comptroller’s report showed that for[...]

Posted 8 months ago

May 16

2024

A lot of time (422 days) and money ($50,493.50)

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Photo illustration by Garrett Looker. Fifty-thousand, four-hundred ninety-three dollars. And fifty cents.  That’s how much a New York state agency paid an Albany law firm to review and redact records about the Tesla factory in South Buffalo before releasing them to Investigative Post. It took the agency 14 months to fulfill the Freedom of Information Law request. “I think it’s outrageous,” said Paul Wolf, president of the New York Coalition for Open Government. “It’s outrageous to spend $50,000 on an outside attorney to process one FOIL request. And this is for a project that has already received $959 million in[...]

Posted 8 months ago

May 14

2024

Secretive state board gives Amazon another break

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The 3 million-square-foot Amazon distribution center being built in Niagara County will not have to pay construction workers prevailing wages, a state board has ruled, despite the project receiving $137 million in tax breaks and subsidies.  State law says the developer must pay prevailing wages if a private construction project costs more than $5 million and subsidies account for at least 30 percent of costs. The wage rate is set by the state Department of Labor and influenced by union pay.  But the state Public Subsidy Board decided in March those rules won’t apply to the Amazon facility.  Why not?[...]

Posted 8 months ago

Apr 30

2024

IDAs have ‘perverse incentive’ to issue tax breaks

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The Erie County IDA earns a majority of its revenue from fees generated by approving subsidy deals. Photo by Garrett Looker. No wonder industrial development agencies across New York State dole out so many tax breaks, watchdog groups say: The more IDAs issue, the more money they make for themselves. That system creates a “perverse incentive,” the groups claim in a new report. “It just creates this horrible incentive where the IDA isn’t working for the public anymore, it’s working for its own self interest,” said Anya Gizis, a researcher at Good Jobs First and one of the report’s authors.[...]

Posted 9 months ago
Investigative Post