By Tom Precious

ALBANY — Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said Wednesday he will give companies $1 billion in the coming years to expand or locate in the Buffalo region, which he said needs a dramatic state commitment to stop losing jobs and population.

Cuomo suggested the region has received only lip service over the years from Albany rather than a kind of Marshall Plan for development.

“We must address the crisis in Western New York … It’s gone on for too long. It’s going to stop today,” said Cuomo, who used the Buffalo plan as a major theme of his second annual State of the State address.

What sorts of industries may be targeted in Buffalo and where all the money will come from are still to be determined.

State officials said the $1 billion will be directed at Buffalo, but other communities in the region could be eligible. That started a bit of a feeding frenzy among local officials over where the money could be spent.

“I think today you heard that the governor’s commitment was for the City of Buffalo. He didn’t say ‘Buffalo and other communities.’ He said a billion dollars is going to Buffalo,” Buffalo Mayor Byron W. Brown said.

But lawmakers representing Western New York communities outside the city were already insisting that other locations should be in line for some of the economic help. “It absolutely has to go beyond Buffalo,” said Sen. George D. Maziarz, R-Newfane.

While praising the idea as “great news” for the region, Maziarz said companies looking for major industrial expansion in the area would more likely look to available land in Niagara County than in Buffalo.

As with most State of the State addresses, details of major plans were left vague. It was not immediately clear how much more in funding the $1 billion represents than would otherwise flow to the region over the coming five years, though Cuomo administration officials said the money would be in addition to funds going through the state’s new regional approach to economic development.

Last month, that process produced more than $100 million for various Buffalo-area projects.

The $1 billion would come in an assortment of tax breaks, cash grants, access to low-cost energy and other incentives, and would be spent over the coming five years or so, administration officials said. It also would include money Albany has no direct control over, such as federal matching grants for job-creation efforts.

The governor tapped a longtime friend, Bruce Katz, a planning expert with the Brookings Institution, to help the Buffalo area come up with priorities for the $1 billion.

The administration likened the plan to a high-tech jobs program in the Albany area begun more than 15 years ago that has included hundreds of millions of dollars in state funding and is starting to transform part of that area’s economy into an internationally recognized technology hot spot.

“We can rebuild Buffalo,” Cuomo told a crowd of about 2,000 lawmakers, local politicians and invited guests at a state convention center near the Capitol.

Before a crowd of local officials from around the state, the governor, who lost all eight Western New York counties in the 2010 gubernatorial election, said the state needs a special focus on Buffalo, which he noted is the nation’s third-poorest city, with a quarter of its population at or below the poverty line.

Officials said the expertise of the Western New York Regional Development Council would be tapped to help develop priorities for the five-year program.

Much of the spending would have to be approved in some form or another by state lawmakers, and it was already clear considerable pressure will be mounted by some state legislators from the Buffalo suburbs to expand the geographic boundaries of the program beyond the city.

In addition, the Legislature in 2012 can’t bind future legislative spending, but sources close to the plan say it is a firm and very visible commitment by Cuomo to provide up to $1 billion over the next five years from various pots of money to companies willing to spend $5 billion in relocation or expansion efforts.

A state official said the idea is to send a “call out to industry around the world that if they come to Buffalo with a competitive package, they will be eligible for $1 billion.”

State officials said eligible industries could include biomedical technology firms that locate in Buffalo’s medical corridor, the automobile industry or any other sector that would be able to meet certain, yet-to-be-determined job-creation guarantees.

Regardless of whether the idea gets changed or funding levels rise or dip, the plan puts Cuomo on the political hook for guaranteeing a new sense of state priority for one of the nation’s longest struggling cities.

“I think it’s a recognition that in order to make a difference, you need to commit some serious resources,” said Andrew J. Rudnick, president of the Buffalo Niagara Partnership.

Rudnick said the funding announcement sends a powerful message nationwide that serious resources are available for businesses that invest in Western New York.

“You know it’s going to be significantly better than what you’ve got now. You just don’t know how much, or when,” Rudnick said. “There may not be a silver bullet in it, but there could be thousands of brass bullets.”

Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz said the program will end up being one of the largest public investments seen in the region. He joined some city officials and lawmakers who said Buffalo should be the target of the funding.

“As the city goes, so goes the whole county, so we need to strengthen the city,” he said. “I think if you take a billion dollars and say we’re going to invest in the City of Buffalo and then you put it in other parts of the county or for that matter Western New York, you defeat the purpose of helping the City of Buffalo.”

The county executive, a Democrat like Cuomo, said the governor’s plan is different from past efforts by Albany to help the region. “He understands that the city is in serious distress,” Poloncarz said of Cuomo.

Sen. Tim Kennedy, a South Buffalo Democrat, was beaming after the State of the State address and the new state effort for the region. Asked how the money should be targeted, he said, “It starts by honing in on the direction that needs it most, and that’s the City of Buffalo.”

Cuomo said his plan will create thousands of jobs and leverage at least $5 billion in private investments. “We believe in Buffalo,” he said, “and we’ll put our money our money where our mouth is.”

The package of money would come from a variety of sources, and could include tax credits, access to low-cost energy, job training and capital grants, infrastructure improvements and funding for real estate investments. Officials said some of the funding, depending on the uses, could be unilaterally approved by the governor.

In a written message to the Legislature, the governor noted Buffalo’s high poverty rate. “But it doesn’t have to be that way,” Cuomo said.

Cuomo said the “substantial, sustained state investment” in Albany has created a whole new sector of the Capital District’s economy.

“We did it in Albany, and we can do it in Buffalo,” he said.

http://www.buffalonews.com/city/capital-connection/albany/article695685.ece

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *