High-tech businesses from other states and abroad that move onto or next to college campuses in New York would operate free of all business, property and personal income taxes for 10 years under a proposal by Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

The governor and his cabinet were to fan out around the state Thursday to push the proposal. Cuomo planned to discuss his initiative at the State University at New Paltz in the Hudson Valley. Lt. Gov. Robert Duffy will be in Rochester.

Cuomo said the plan would create jobs in a long-stagnant upstate economy by connecting academic research campuses with businesses in those fields.

“We create great businesses here in this state because we have great schools and we have great young minds,” Cuomo said Wednesday.

“We lose them in the first year. Why? Because we have an anti-business reputation, we’re a high-tax state,” Cuomo said. “What we want to do is create an environment where those businesses stay here and create jobs. … There would be no place in the country that you could go and pay less taxes.”

It’s unclear whether the proposal would help retain new companies beyond the 10-year period when they would face what are now some of the nation’s highest taxes. Cuomo wouldn’t answer questions after a presentation at the state College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering in Albany.

“It’s a risk you run,” said Brian Sampson of the Unshackle Upstate business group, which support Cuomo’s proposal.

This month, Chief Executive magazine ranked New York as the 49th-worst state for business in the opinion of CEOs questioned, based on high taxes, bureaucracy and regulations.

The full exemption of all taxes is a “promising new wrinkle,” said E.J. McMahon of the fiscally conservative Manhattan Institute.

McMahon said the state go further and use its more generous, $440 million tax subsidy for TV and movie productions to phase out all corporate taxes for new and existing companies.

Republicans say a broad tax cutting approach is needed.

“We need to improve our overall tax structure and make it friendly to business,” said Senate Republican leader Dean Skelos. He said the state also needs to cut business regulations and bureaucracy.

“Why,” asked Republican Assemblyman Kieran Michael Lalor back in Albany, “should New York’s struggling small businesses continue to pay high taxes, while the governor lets a few pay no taxes at all?”

In Buffalo, reporters asked Cuomo about just that.

“We’re working — we have been the last two years — reducing taxes all across the board,” Cuomo said. He referred indirectly to the two times he and the Legislature have extended what was to be a temporary $2 billion income tax increase for millionaires.

“The governor’s credibility is undermined by his insistence on over-spinning the record,” McMahon said. He said extensions of this and other taxes that were due to expire and the increase in the minimum wage “outweigh the benefits of the plan announced today.”

“Good politics? Maybe,” McMahon said. “But no one would call this a pro-growth tax policy.”

Silver said after the Albany announcement that he will insist that current New Yorkers benefit from the new jobs and there would be serious “claw back” provisions and penalties for companies that fail to meet promises of jobs and development.

Silver says that project has been discussed for weeks and he expects it to be adopted by the Legislature before the end of its session June 20.

“It’s not forever. We’re talking about some five-year benefits, some 10-year benefits,” Silver said. “Eventually they are going to become fully taxpaying citizens.”

“The tax-free zones will be the answer to finally creating jobs in New York,” said Sen. Jeff Klein, leader of the Independent Democratic Conference.

© 2013, The Wall Street Journal