Madmallard
.223 Rem
In late 2015, New York announced a sweeping agreement to save four Kraft-Heinz production plants across upstate, vowing to invest $20 million to save the 940 jobs.
Now, less than two years later, the small town of Campbell in the Southern Tier is unsettled. Efforts are teetering to keep open a Kraft cheese plant in the community of fewer than 3,700 people, and the company announced in May it will continue to look for a new buyer until August, leaving 330 jobs in the balance.
"They don’t know if the plant is going to be bought by somebody or if they are just going to close the doors, and everybody just gets laid off -- the unemployment line," said the local union's leader, Rich Dexter.
The plant's fate illustrates the perilous nature of New York's economy as it pours at least $8 billion a year — more than any state in the nation — into dozens of job-creation programs that haven't met their goals.
A six-month-long investigation by the USA Today Network in New York found myriad problems with the state's economic-development efforts, ranging from under-performing programs to a lack of transparency on how taxpayers' money is spent.
And despite the spending, the labor force outside New York City continues to shrink.
Among the investigation's findings, which centered on a dozen economic-development programs that have doled out $13 billion in incentives since 2011 when Gov. Andrew Cuomo took office:
NY spends $8B each year on job programs: So where are the jobs?
Now, less than two years later, the small town of Campbell in the Southern Tier is unsettled. Efforts are teetering to keep open a Kraft cheese plant in the community of fewer than 3,700 people, and the company announced in May it will continue to look for a new buyer until August, leaving 330 jobs in the balance.
"They don’t know if the plant is going to be bought by somebody or if they are just going to close the doors, and everybody just gets laid off -- the unemployment line," said the local union's leader, Rich Dexter.
The plant's fate illustrates the perilous nature of New York's economy as it pours at least $8 billion a year — more than any state in the nation — into dozens of job-creation programs that haven't met their goals.
A six-month-long investigation by the USA Today Network in New York found myriad problems with the state's economic-development efforts, ranging from under-performing programs to a lack of transparency on how taxpayers' money is spent.
And despite the spending, the labor force outside New York City continues to shrink.
Among the investigation's findings, which centered on a dozen economic-development programs that have doled out $13 billion in incentives since 2011 when Gov. Andrew Cuomo took office:
- Money went to initiatives that in many cases fell short of the job goals, while others did not set any benchmarks for assessing their success or failure.
- The state's Regional Economic Development Councils have pledged more than $4.4 billion to 5,300 projects since 2011, but few have job-creation targets, and potential conflicts of interest emerge.
- The state's largest incentive program, tax credits for movies and TV shows, provided more than $730 million for 273 television and movie productions since 2014 — at a cost per job of $42,000.
- One effort, the StartUp NY program, which provides tax-free zones to new businesses, dished out nearly $6 million in tax breaks in addition to $53 million in ads to promote it. It initially promised 3,324 jobs, but created a third of that as of the end of 2016.
- Local Development Corporations, run locally, gave out nearly $1.3 billion in state and local tax breaks to 1,660 projects between 2010 and 2015. The net number of jobs came in at 1,686 — far short of 9,136 promised.
- Nearly half of jobs promised by another type of local body, Industrial Development Agencies, fell short of their stated goals. And while the total cost of IDA projects rose by 22 percent between 2010 and 2015, the tax exemptions for the projects grew by 44 percent.
NY spends $8B each year on job programs: So where are the jobs?
