Cuomo’s ‘Buffalo Billion’: Is New York Getting Its Money’s Worth?

Corrupt transactional politics does not produce jobs. And dynasties in american politics is the source of much corruption. This Governor holds his title simply because his father did, that and a really bad Republican opponent. There's a primary in September.

I imagine that, when initiatives like this are on the table, the immediate beneficiaries work with the elected facilitator to make imagined secondary gains feel concrete. Spin language results, which can be used publicly. But is science involved? Or can long-term outcomes even be predicted with the certainty of a number like 6,850 jobs (the sum of the Cuomo predictions cited here)? Maybe the problem is that politicians have to work with short-handled, rudimentary tools (like dumping $1bn on a region). Perhaps real solutions require thinking out long-term event chains and adjusting as necessary. That’s not an argument for ending term limits. But it suggests the need for continuity and for new public executives to strive to build on the work of their predecessors. If so, voters would do well to make it a key requirement for candidates. And schools (pre-college) should teach policy cause-and-effect fundamentals. Or maybe it’s a reflection of our current, flawed system of campaign financing - a politician HAS to line the pockets of a few rich developers and such in order to get the chance to do a lot of good things for a lot of people. This does sound compelling: "Mr. Zemsky noted some 25,000 new private sector jobs have come to the city [and] that many of the Buffalo Billion projects...were not exclusively about jobs, per se, but support for long-term solutions like downtown revitalization, smart growth, opening up the waterfront and keeping younger generations from fleeing."

There have been a series of commercials touting Cuomo's redevelopment plans for upstate NY in general. If the intent of the program is to provide jobs then the commercials themselves belie that promise. Invariably, they depict sparkling, cavernous facilities staffed by a handful of lab-coated technicians. No doubt, this is not far from the truth and will be true of manufacturing everywhere. This is a problem that is not being addressed by anyone, particularly the Democrats, from whom we might have expected better - ha,ha.