Written on Thursday, January 8th, 2009 at 8:54am by Alan Bedenko | 4 Comments

State of Upstate

Last year, when Spitzer gave a separate “state of upstate” address, it was watched by residents statewide. This year, there will be no such address. Instead, Paterson will crisscross upstate cities holding town hall meetings. The Buffalo one is supposed to happen on February 18th.

That’s all swell.

But the Buffalo News makes the point that this piecemeal approach might not be as effective:

Spitzer’s speech was an event, heard by upstaters and downstaters alike. He invited New Yorkers to judge his progress from year to year.

It will be harder to hold Paterson accountable for specific progress, but he could also come away from these town hall meetings with a fuller understanding of upstate’s problems, and perhaps with the seeds of new ideas for addressing them. In the end, upstaters have to trust that Paterson is interested in their issues. That he is going to hold these meetings suggests that trust would not be misplaced. It will pay to watch.

It’s also fair to note that this is a radically different time in New York from a year ago, when Spitzer unveiled a $1 billion upstate revitalization program. The bottom has come out of the state’s bucket since then, as problems with the national economy hit New York especially hard. Big-ticket projects are harder to pursue when even routine obligations become challenges. What is more, to a greater extent than last year, upstate and downstate share similar problems.

The thing about it is that the problems that upstate cities face all stem from the same root; only the names have changed. Just about all of these cities grew thanks to manufacturing, some of them thanks to the Erie Canal.

The thing about all of this talk of deep recessions or depressions is that upstate New York has been in one for years, now. The decline has been steady and constant, and no part of upstate has been immune. If the axiom “what goes up must come down” holds any water, then places like Buffalo may be better positioned to ride all of this out than others.

I plan to attend Paterson’s town hall when he comes around. I want to hear that Albany gets it, and that it will address the root issues that help keep us down, and help keep us uncompetitive. I would like for it to be that, when the nationwide economic rebound occurs, Buffalo and other parts of upstate New York are better positioned to enjoy the good times, including economic growth, reduction of spending and taxation, making our regulatory schemes more competitive with those of neighboring and similarly situated states, and populations stabilization. I think that’s how we’ll ultimately measure Paterson’s success or failure.

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4 Comments

  1. Starbuck says:
    January 8, 2009 at 1:14 pm

    Even if they “care” (and show they do in great speeches at proper locations), it doesn’t matter if they still won’t or politically can’t make the kinds of policy changes that could really help.

    Sure, he can promise some spending. In Buffalo the local pols would want it spent on things such as the Canal Side hotels and museum (barf), the Richardson Tower (yawn), and more building on the medical campus. Those have all been promised by previous governors. And of course the state annual monies sent to local governments and schools, and some other things – brownfield cleanup, subsidies to particular companies like GM-Tonawanda, Geico, Bass Pro, etc.

    That same kind of spending has been going on a long time here. It’s more of the same and we’ve seen those don’t make widespread long term impact on the economy.

  2. Starbuck says:
    January 8, 2009 at 1:18 pm

    What could really help is improving the business cliamate. That’d mean reforms to seriously lower taxes and other costs of running businesses. Often discussed examples include cutbacks in Medicaid, repealing costly labor laws (Taylor, Wicks, scaffoliding, etc.), and pushing for givebacks in public employee labor contracts (retirement benefits, work rules, etc.).

    Those kinds of reforms would help the whole state. However they won’t or politically can’t happen in NY state, no matter how many caring I-feel-your-pain speeches are given or where the speeches are held. If Paterson promised those, he’d be disowned by the party and defeated in the 2010 primary by someone promising more traditional approaches like fighting for working families (those who haven’t moved to a Carolina) and asking rich businesses to pay their fare share.

  3. STEEL says:
    January 8, 2009 at 2:02 pm

    You have to wonder how many more resources would now be available to the state to get through this economy if its policies had been geared toward growth instead of being geared toward decline. Imaging the additional tax revenue that would be generated by Rochester and Buffalo if they had twice the population they currently have.

    If you think that 2 times the population is not realistic think about this.

    Metro Atlanta in 1950 had a smaller population than metro Buffalo. In the ensuing time period Atlanta went from 997,000 people to 5,626,000. They did that in Atlanta because they promoted business instead of looking at it as a tax cow. Oh yes Buffalo in that time period? from just over 1M people to just under 1.2M people and going down.

    How can any government justify that performance over such a long period of time? It is a disgrace.

  4. Denizen says:
    January 9, 2009 at 12:05 am

    Downstate politicians like Paterson couldn’t give two shits about Upstate. With such lopsided demographics and power distribution, there’s little incentive for downstaters to care the least bit about our problem up here in the wilderness.

    To succeed we need to secede, it’s as simple as that.

 

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