Buffalo News Series on NY Empire Zone Program

For those of you interested in seeing how a newspaper can work over your incentive programs, take a look at the Buffalo News series on the NY State Empire Zone Program. Article link. This is the link to the first article on June 8. Other stories can be found on June 9-11.

In a nutshell, the article series pummels the state's Empire Zone program for being scattered geographically, unfocused in terms of business and industry targets and unable to hold companies using the program accountable.

I was interviewed for and quoted in the June 8 lead story. While clearly there are some examples of better run incentive programs out there, most "zone programs" are outmoded and they do little to reverse poverty and other economic problems in central cities, where they are the most needed.

Companies like tax abatement programs because they add to business profitability, but many of these programs basically amount to "growth shifting" strategies. The next generation of incentives should focus squarely on sparking "value-added" growth. More importantly, we should fix the underlying competitiveness problems of communities so we don't need these programs in the future. We may need an entirely new paradigm of economic development to accomplish this latter objective.