There’s more evidence that the Cuomo administration’s Start-up New York program is nothing but a colossal waste of taxpayers’ money that could be better spent on real human needs.
Key state lawmakers have expressed concern that the state missed the early April deadline to report on the program’s progress on promised job creation. Last year, the state spent more than $50 million on advertising to promote the program and only 76 jobs were created — a cost of $697,000 per job. The administration has spent more than $207 million on advertising promotion over the past three years but has yet to show any further results.
Start-Up New York is the governor’s controversial corporate welfare program that exempts
start-up companies connected to college campuses from local property taxes and their employees from paying state income taxes, for the first 10 years of their existence.
“The Cuomo administration has largely abandoned people suffering from mental illness; there are waiting lists of individuals and families who need access to developmental disabilities services, to name just a few examples of real need,” said CSEA President Danny Donohue. “But money’s no object when it comes to their self-serving promotion of Start-Up New York.”
Donohue and CSEA criticized the plan as a really bad idea when it was launched in 2013. Others have pointed out that the program undercuts localities by letting companies avoid local property taxes. Another criticism is that it boosts start-up companies while ignoring established businesses that have long paid their taxes and operated by the rules to make a contribution to the state’s economy.
Incredibly, the head of the Empire State Development Corp., which oversees Start-Up New York, stated at a public hearing a few months ago that the program’s impact on public perception was more important than the number of jobs it has created.
