The bottom dropped out of our economic development efforts on Friday as ams AG withdrew from the Marcy Nanocenter project. And according to the Rome Sentinel headline, area officials place blame at the state level for no chip plant.
The finger pointing is sadly funny, because the Marcy project never even got to first base until the "state level" got the site's federal wetlands permit.
So currently the Mohawk Valley is a two time loser on this venture, 2006 and now. Maybe the third time will be the charm . . .
In the mean time, what have we done as an area to make ourselves competitive with other parts of the country that have taken our jobs over the years? How do our taxes compare? How do our water, sewer, electric costs compare? How do our transportation costs compare? How does our regulatory complexity compare?
Hint: The burdens have not been lessened.
Until the fundamental issues affecting business' bottom line are remedied, our "economic development" efforts will always result in limited return.
5 comments:
Would anyone in their right mind give Griffo, Picenti and the rest, including the EDGE which has not had a recruiting success in over 20 years, hundreds of millions of your own dollars to chase and develop industries? I think not. Yet these losers get to gamble with and waste hundreds of millions of our tax dollars. Yet, the dummies among us keep electing them. No one seems to be accountable for failure. Worse, the cheerleading media headed by the OD and that radio clown Keeler keep peddling the baloney fed to them by the bush league politicians. Pathetic is not a strong enough word.
The EDGE has been in business for about 20 years. How many new industries have they recruited in? How many new jobs have been created? They have specialized I checker boarding businesses and facilities already here into below market real estate deals at the former air base. In Rome a high school was even relocated while the old one remains empty in the middle of the city. Where is the "new" development?
Some random somewhat related thoughts:
It's not the government's job to speculate, invest or become a landlord. How did we get to point of having our state college's head become the main conduit for large scale business investing across the state? And to top it off to have the plans executed by non-profit shell companies that are not accountable to anyone.
The chasing of this nano pipe dream has been going on for 20 years. Like you say now we (we meaning you and I, the taxpayers) have infrastructure to support in addition to all the initial costs. Doesn't anyone think that maybe instead of chasing a unicorn we could have done MANY more smaller scale and diverse investments with that money? Some would be winners, some losers but at least the chances for success would have been higher. Also the beneficiaries more than likely would have been locals not an Austrian company with (let's face it) engineers and technicians brought in from out of the area. Not that I'm against bringing smart people here.
Did you ever notice that any announcement that a company or companies coming in were 1) never or rarely named, and 2) always announced by a government official. I never believed they were coming because the announcement didn't come from the actual company.
Don't expect local media to go digging for facts. They are fighting for their life just to stay in business and can't afford to hire the talent required. It is their job to ask the hard questions, but you can't faulting them being incapable of it because of those circumstances.
The function of government is to protect and serve. They can serve the greater good in this case by making the conditions attractive for businesses want to come and stay here. Not by actively spending billions of our tax dollars making huge "build it and they will come" projects. The fundamental problems that you have mentioned including taxes and other costs that put us out of competition need to be addressed first.
Great post above. However, the people continue to elect the same old same old. Why would anyone expect results and strategies to change? As for the OD, problems or not, it should not masquerade as a newspaper if the market place prevents it from being one. The real fundamental problem of the area is its demographic composition. Old, poor, relatively loaded with immigrants needing public services and an extreme over dependence on government money. Tough nut to crack, to say the least.
Yea, Anonymous, Joe Griffo masquerading as a Republican gives us the highest sales tax in the state and one of the highest in the country and what do our brilliant people do? They elect him to a higher office in a state with the highest taxes in the nation. An, we wonder why we fail?
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