ALBANY — Amazon’s decision to step away from its plan to build a second headquarters in New York after being offered billions of dollars in state incentives drew sharp reaction from across the political spectrum Thursday and stoked new worries about the state’s business climate.
While the Amazon deal was advanced by appointees of Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, one of the most vocal critics of the project has been Senate Deputy Leader Mike Gianaris, a Queens Democrat who represents a portion of the New York City borough where the Amazon project was sited.
Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, D-Yonkers, broke ranks with Cuomo over the Amazon deal. She suggested the state’s attempt to bring at least 25,000 jobs to New York City crumbled because the process lacked transparency and shut out local officials such as Gianaris.
“This process was clearly flawed and did not include the affected community nor their legislative representatives until after the deal was signed,” Stewart-Cousins said.
At a state budget hearing this week, Sen. Jim Seward, R-Milford, asked Howard Zemsky, the chief of economic development for the Cuomo administration, to delve into whether an Amazon warehouse could be placed in his upstate district.
On Thursday, Seward said he was disappointed by the collapse of what Cuomo hailed as the biggest business project in New York history. The senator suggested the deal’s benefits outweighed the drawbacks resulting from the project’s secrecy.
“It is extremely unfortunate that a hostile political environment has resulted in the loss of 25,000 good-paying jobs,” Seward said.
Just two days before Amazon’s announcement, a Siena College poll found that 56 percent of New Yorkers backed the state’s deal to subsidize Amazon’s second headquarters, noted Assemblyman Robin Schimminger, D-Kenmore.
“I certainly hope that Amazon will reconsider this decision,” Schimminger, who oversees the Assembly’s economic development committee, said. He said the collapse of the deal underscores the importance of “community energizing and astro-turfing” to build support for potentially controversial projects and prevent people who could be impacted from “feeling they have been blind-sided.”
E.J. McMahon, research director for the Empire Center for Public Policy, said the scuttling of the Amazon headquarters “highlights New York’s lack of competitiveness” as it jockeys with other states to lure jobs.
While the nation’s largest city struggles with an overcrowded subway and other hindrances to development, the solution put forward by critics of the Amazon subsidy amount to a simplistic “tax the rich” approach, without any other targeted remedies, McMahon said.
The Amazon deal became wobbly after the Senate Democrats arranged to have Gianaris placed on a a government board that could potentially hold up the project, a concern acknowledged by Cuomo this week. Amazon’s decision to scratch the deal exposed significant fault lines in the New York Democratic Party, with a Cuomo spokeswoman blasting one of the Long Island Democratic senators, Todd Kaminsky, who approved of the Gianaris appointment.
Cuomo spokeswoman Dani Lever told Newsday that the “Senate tanked the Amazon plan by placing a stalwart Amazon opponent on the (board) to pander to the local socialists.”
© 2019 The Daily Star
You may also like
Policy analyst: Cuomo wrong to write-off nursing home criticism as political conspiracy
“The importance of discussing this and getting the true facts out is to understand what did and didn’t happen so we can learn from it in case this happens again,” Hammond said. Read More
The good, the bad and the ugly in Cuomo’s budget
“We are at the early stages of what shapes up as the biggest state and city fiscal crisis since the Great Depression,” said E.J. McMahon of the Empire Center. “Borrowing and short-term cuts aside, the budget doesn’t chart any clear path out of it.” Read More
Medicaid cuts make the state budget, with some tweaks
Bill Hammond, director of health policy at the conservative-leaning think tank the Empire Center, suggested this is because the proposed cuts are meant to slow the otherwise rapid growth in Medicaid spending, which means an increase is still possible. Read More
Editorial: Cuomo’s problematic Medicaid maneuvers
“It’s everything that’s wrong with Albany in one ugly deal,” Bill Hammond, a health policy expert at the fiscally conservative Empire Center, told The Times. Read More
Gov. Cuomo’s Lawsuit on Pres. Trump’s Tax Cuts Dismissed
But according to the Empire Center, a non-profit group based in Albany, the overall impact of the Trump tax cuts actually benefited most state residents. Read More
NYS Healthcare Costs Rise Amid Report Of Pay-To-Play Allegations
Earlier this year, another fiscal watchdog group, The Empire Center, found that Cuomo’s budget office had delayed a $1.7 billion Medicaid payment from the previous fiscal year into the current fiscal year. Because of the delay, the governor was able to keep within a self imposed 2% yearly spending cap. Read More
After Hospitals’ Donation to New York Democrats, a $140 Million Payout
“It’s everything that’s wrong with Albany in one ugly deal,” said Bill Hammond, a health policy expert at the nonpartisan Empire Center who first noticed the budgetary trick. “The governor was able to unilaterally direct a billion dollars to a major interest group while secretly accepting its campaign cash and papering over a massive deficit in the Medicaid program.” Read More
EDITORIAL: State schools continue spending more for less
As reported by the Empire Center last week, “The number of students enrolled in New York state public schools is the lowest recorded in 30 years.”
Since 2000, enrollment in public schools has declined by more than 10 percent statewide with most of it upstate as enrollment in New York City schools has increased 1.3 percent in the last 10 years. Students are not leaving to go to private or parochial schools either because they, too, are showing declines, down about 8 percent in the last decade. Read More