The Gov’s High-Tech Mess

If New York state government has had any real success with its economic-development efforts over the last two decades, it’s in fostering a nanotech industry in the Capital area. But Gov. Cuomo’s initiatives have put that at risk — by diverting resources to other industries and other areas.

Starting in the Pataki years, targeted state financial aid fostered a nanotech industry in the Capital Region. A recent Brookings study has found that the resulting Tech Valley has reached a tipping point for continued success — but, the Albany Business Review reports, it was nearly derailed by Cuomo’s efforts to copy the plan elsewhere.

The Albany area has an educated workforce and multiple university research centers that regularly generate new tech patents. The 1990s state effort played to those strengths by fostering private-public partnerships that shared risks and benefits.

But Cuomo decided to try to make the same thing happen in Buffalo, Syracuse and Rochester — urban hubs that lack one or more of the prerequisites. He also picked less fundamental technologies to promote, making the investments riskier.

It became a classic insider pay-to-play game — with SUNY Poly CEO Alain Kaloyeros, widely credited as a key force behind the nanotech miracle, now sentenced to prison for petty corruption after Cuomo made him point man for his own less-inspired schemes.

The perfect symbol of Cuomo’s approach is the Tesla solar-panel factory in Buffalo, still near collapse despite $750 million in state subsidies. The plant hosts 800 jobs, but employment would have to double by the spring to meet the state’s promises.

The state is now quietly spending millions to bail out entities deep in the red from Cuomo’s high-tech schemes. Sadly, the rest of the political establishment figures it’s safer to help cover up failure than to call out the governor for all the cash he’s flushed down the economic-development drain.