Daily Times

ALBANY: They are his boldest ideas and his proudest accomplishments – but lately, Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s economic development initiatives are generating trouble faster than jobs.

The Buffalo Billion, the Democratic governor’s plan to revive the state’s second largest city, is under federal investigation and plagued by cash flow problems. Start-Up NY, which aims to attract new companies, has produced meager results. And a third program that offers tax credits to companies that create new jobs was sharply criticized by a recent audit.

Until recently, Cuomo regularly touted these programs as helping to reverse decades of decline and stagnation. But the string of troubles has put the usually self-assured governor on the defensive.

“I think the criticism is very unfair and ironic,” Cuomo said about the response to Start-Up’s lackluster performance.

“The program has been in operation a couple of years,” he added. “It takes time.”

Overall, the state’s economy has improved since Cuomo took office in 2011. Unemployment is down and job numbers are up throughout the state. But the struggles facing Cuomo’s signature initiatives are giving fresh material to critics who say Start-Up, the Buffalo Billion and other programs were always meant to promote Cuomo more than the economy.

Start-Up created tax-free enterprise zones at colleges and universities in a bid to attract entrepreneurs. According to a report quietly released late on the Friday before the July Fourth weekend – three months after it was originally due – the program has created only 408 jobs so far. The 159 companies participating are projected to generate 4,100 jobs by 2020.

Three years ago, the state budget office projected Start-Up could generate as much as $150 million in tax breaks in the current fiscal year; the report for 2015, however, found it actually generated $1.19 million.

Cuomo said in 2013 that Start-Up would be a “major transformation” and a “game changer.” Officials are now more measured.

“It’s a tool in our tool box. I would caution against over emphasizing this as the end-all be-all of economic development,” said Howard Zemsky, president of the Empire State Development Corp., the state’s economic development agency.

Despite Cuomo’s insistence that Start-Up has cost taxpayers “nothing,” the state spent $53 million on ads to promote the program, part of a larger advertising contract intended that touted the state’s broader economic development strategy. Forty percent of the commercials ran in-state – a fact seized on by critics from the left and right who say Start-Up has been a waste of money.

“Taxing families in struggling communities to pay for propaganda designed to convince them that a failing jobs program is working is almost Orwellian,” said Republican Assemblyman Gary Finch.

The Buffalo Billion, meanwhile, remains mired in problems of a different kind. The program injected $1 billion into the economy of the state’s second largest city, with much of it concentrated on SolarCity’s plan to build the nation’s largest solar panel factory.

In April, Cuomo’s office announced that US Attorney Preet Bharara was investigating potential conflicts of interest and improper bidding related to the Buffalo Billion as well as Nano, a related effort to attract high-tech nanotechnology jobs.

The probe is focusing on two former top aides to Cuomo. One is Joe Percoco, Cuomo’s former executive secretary and campaign director who briefly left the administration in 2014 to work for two firms involved in the Buffalo Billion and Nano.