Remove corporate subsidies from state budget

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New York is one of the nation’s most prolific purveyors of corporate subsidies, handing out some $10 billion annually between the state and localities. The list of recipients is a who’s who of the largest, most dominant corporations on Earth: Amazon, Tesla,

IBM, Micron, Uber.

All that money, though, has purchased very little.

The research consensus on these economic development funds is that New York hasn’t received the promised jobs, investment, or economic prosperity, but instead got a slew of corruption scandals, empty buildings, and emptier promises.

Despite the ample heap of evidence — academic and realworld — showing that corporate subsidies don’t work as advertised, Gov. Kathy Hochul’s budget doubles down on them, proposing the expansion and resurrection of failed and failing programs that will cost the state hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars.

This is in line with Hochul’s track record: While her administration has backed some progressive plans such as increased mental health investments and indexing the minimum wage, it has an underlying commitment to prioritizing the needs of corporations, battling labor unions, and capitulating to corporate lobbyists.

Enough is enough. New York’s Legislature does not have to go down the path Hochul has trod. And the first step is very simple: Freeze all corporate subsidy spending, and grant Hochul none of the expansions she has asked for. No expansion of the film and TV tax credit. No new big developer handouts. No more stadium or horse racing subsidies. No more doubling down on failure.

Particularly as there is an ongoing audit into the efficacy of these programs, spending more now is the height of folly, and it will cause New Yorkers to needlessly waste public resources on a failed model of economic growth.

Not only will boosting corpo

When it comes to real economic development, there’s no mystery about what works: investing in people.

rate handouts do little to help the economic well-being of New Yorkers, it does even less to show voters the government cares about promoting transparency and fighting corruption — an area where Hochul has so far failed to meaningfully set herself apart from the Cuomo administration.

When it comes to real economic development, there’s no mystery about what works: investing in people, and making New York a premier state in which to work, raise a family, and start a business. New York has no need to bribe corporations to come set up shop within its borders; it has loads of advantages in terms of education quality, infrastructure, and workforce that targeted investments can entrench and expand.

Freezing and ultimately rolling back failed corporate subsidies is not only good policy, but good politics. There is consistent cross-partisan support for measures that increase scrutiny of corporate handouts, and a growing appreciation among the public that they’ve been sold a raw deal for decades. Consider the billiondollar handout for a new Buffalo Bills stadium that Hochul rammed through the Legislature, which less than a quarter of voters supported.

The Legislature doesn’t have to play along with this corporate giveaway game. With the legislative chambers soon to release their own budgets, now is the time to take a stand, freeze senseless corporate handouts, and stop the Hochul administration’s effort to further entrench rentseeking by the most dominant corporations in the world.