Buffalo Geek nails it, with respect to the proposed Yahoo! datacenter in Lockport. He suggests that it should have been sited somewhere in the city, or at least closer to where the computer nerds in the region are. The data center will create 75 jobs, which, when you factor in all of the tax breaks and incentives being handed out by the state, comes out to a subsidy of $1.35MM per job. Yet WNY still refuses to dictate so much as a single term to Yahoo!
Placing the datacenter in Lockport, away from the academic clusters and other related industry limits the potential for spinoff, such as it is. While Lockport is a much better choice than Pembroke or Cambria, I wonder why New York State did not encourage Yahoo! to locate its facility in the urban core of Buffalo or Niagara Falls or even Amherst. Oh, wait…I know! It’s because we don’t have a plan. Practicing ad hoc economic development is no way to go through life, guys. Here’s a lesson for local leaders, if you’re going to give away over $1MM in incentives per job created, you have the responsibility and right to dictate some of the criteria for site selection.
The Buffalo Record 
Its about time this Yahoo farce is exposed. Free taxes for 20 years, the same about of power allocation that’s given to Delphi, and now they are still crying because they want Verizon to lay down a free T1 line without any commitment to how long it will be used. They are stating that yahoo wants to remain flexible and does not want to enter into any long term deals. ( Unless its free taxes I guess)
All this for 4 fema trailors and maybe 75 jobs, which means about 35 if your lucky.
Look at it from from the perspective of Yahoo – do you want to deal with the Hooterville planning board, or the development thugs in Buffalo?
Not to mention it is a second rate company quickly losing ground in the search world – imho
A great case for ending corporate welfare.
We don’t have a plan because the region doesn’t actually want to solve any collective problems. If we had a regional plan places in the burbs would actually have to concern themselves with neighborhoods like the East side. And no politician will ever say that their community shouldn’t get a new business because it would serve the region better to have it somewhere else. Even if true because most residents of those communities don’t care what happens inside that invisible city line.
The same goes in reverse the city (unions) would have to be willing to open up to a higher level of scrutiny community voice and change. Politicians Unions here want to keep and retain power.. even if that power is useless and fading.
How do you possibly end corporate welfare?
If the federal government makes it a law…the pro-business side of the aisle screams foul because of that big overreaching government.
If the state government makes it a law, NY State is at more of a disadvantage to lure companies here….not to mention we might actually need a state Senate to be able to vote it into law. Without corporate welfare, what are the reasons that you would actually locate a company in NYS?
How do you possibly end corporate welfare?
CUT TAX RATES—NYS has a tax for everything.
Lower tax rates always result in higher revenues to the government.
Ethan Allen Furniture just moved 300 jobs into my county from California
they weren’t given ANYTHING from the NC government. And they have to build on to one of their formely closed plants to accomplish the move.
They made no bones about it–their lease on their CA building was up and they WANTED TO ESCAPE THE HIGH CA TAXES.
Google built a server farm in Caldlwell County, where dozens of textile mills have closed. Didn’t get ANY breaks from local or state government. Idle land, plenty of out of work people, they saw it as a win-win.
It can be done—the pols just need to do what’s right in Albany and stop kissing the ass of all these companies.
It’s cool though Pete–nobody who can make it happen is listening, or gives a shit.
@hank In re North Carolina Google center. “State and local officials offered a variety of incentives to land the facility, including a Job Development Investment Grant of more than $4 million. Google also will receive a variety of other incentives that are expected to push the package past $100 million. Caldwell County and the City of Lenoir have granted Google a 100 percent waiver on business property taxes and an 80 percent waiver on real estate property taxes over the next 30 years.”
“The Google incentive package is far from being the most expensive the state has assembled to land a high-tech business. More than $280 million in incentives were needed in 2004 to land a new Dell manufacturing plant that opened in Winston-Salem in 2005.”
well hank you got anything to say? he must be out in the alley drinking beer lookin at car engines.
Damn your research Frieda- how dare you shoot holes in Hank’s arguments!
@Pete, NYS is already at a disadvantage because of extraordinarily high taxes. The high taxes offset any advantage from the wasteful corporate welfare.
Last the papers spoke about it they weren’t offering Google anything—which was in the wake of a BIG package the state gave Dell computer in Greensboro, whose jobs cost the state more per job than this Yahoo deal in NY would. I guess the Charlotte papers don’t keep up well wth what’s going on 90 miles away. The whole object was to get Google without the mess they made with Dell.
This is what happens when government controls the media, be it at state or federal level.
That’s 2 incidents in a state wth a LOT less problems than you’re looking at.
So laugh at Hank—No problem—doesn’t fix the fuck story that you wake up to and live in every day. I got my income, my house don’t have wheels on it, I don’t pay 1/10th of the taxes you do, and I’m not up to my crotch in snow 8 months out of the year watching the infrastructure of where I live crumble before my eyes.
NY is 2nd in government spending, NC 37th.
We should unilaterally disarm on corporate welfare.
CW is a drop in the bucket, possibly five billion, yet our taxes are higher than other states by fifty billion or so.
The main function of CW is to allow politicians to extract donations from firms and to make firms fearful of challenging the machine. It works!
Politicians can’t pick winners in the marketplace. See, MITI.
If other states want to tax their citizens to subsidize firms that sell us cheap products, I say, keep the gifts coming.
Just because other states shoot themselves in the foot is no reason for us to do so.