Written on Friday, November 3rd, 2006 at 2:41pm by Christopher Smith | 6 Comments

SORD Loser

The Buffalo News threw Marc Coppola a publicity bone today as he is still technically in the race for the 60th district seat in the New York State Senate.

Marc lost the Democratic primary to Masten District Common Councilman Antoine Thompson but still retains a ballot line as the Independence Party nominee. However, the point of this post is not to discuss Coppola’s chances of winning the election, it’s to discuss one of Marc’s proposed initiatives…SORD.

“Creating economic opportunity is vitally important because without well-paying, secure jobs, people are going to move,” said Coppola, adding that during his time in the Senate, he worked on a plan with several other senators to create Strategic Offices of Regional Development.

Called SORD, the idea is to divide the state into 10 regions and focus on the assets of those regions, Coppola explained.

“We’re too scattered. There are too many IDAs, too many agencies. SORD would give the state an opportunity to say to a business, “This is where you should be. We want you in New York State, but you should be here instead of there.’ We don’t need people in the whole state competing against each other,” Coppola said.

He also said Western New York does not have a “salesperson” to fly around the country to proactively pursue businesses and corporations to locate here.

Wow. Where to begin with this misguided logic?

I have to say that I have truly grown tired to the bone from hearing politicians tell me they will create economic opportunity and jobs. Can we all agree that government has no skill in the arena of job creation?

If government could create private economic opportunity, wealth, and jobs, we’d have so god damned much of it in Buffalo that we’d have a 100 page employment section in the classified section of The Buffalo News. After all; Volker, Tokasz, Hoyt, Maziarz, Schimminger, Hayes, Rath, Peoples, Coppola, Brown, Giambra, Higgins, Slaughter, Clinton, Schumer, Schroeder, and their predecessors have been promising to deliver job creation and economic renewal for the better part of three decades. They have developed innumerable agencies that were staffed with government muckety mucks armed with millions in state dollars to lure businesses here. The sum total of that effort amounts to bupkus. The solution? Create another agency!

Here’s a tip, we don’t need more state organizations with catchy acronyms, we need tax cuts. It really is that simple.

Also, I think that Tom Kucharski and the BNE might take exception to the claim that there isn’t a “salesperson” who is actively recruiting business to Western New York. He is, and it’s an uphill battle because guys like Marc who have no experience outside the world of government refuse to do the things that would make his job easier…cut taxes and reduce arcane regulations.

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6 Comments

  1. BuffaloPundit says:
    November 3, 2006 at 3:32 pm

    Hey – I spat up a Buzz deconstruction. Where are my videos?

  2. Pauldub says:
    November 3, 2006 at 3:48 pm

    You shouldn’t eat those things so fast.
    Videos by the time I get home or someone gets hurt…

  3. Rus Thompson says:
    November 3, 2006 at 10:31 pm

    and Marc is gonna be Hoyts replacement? Oui Vey!

  4. Nathanael Nerode says:
    November 8, 2006 at 4:59 pm

    Doubt “tax cuts” is really what you need to create jobs. It usually doesn’t work, *especially* when you don’t specify *which* taxes.

    The thing to find out is:
    (1) what types of businesses are doing relatively well, or at least eking by, in Buffalo?
    (2) what are *their* major complaints? For instance, are they complaining about particular regulations, complaining that it’s too hard to transport goods to and from them, complaining that it’s too hard for workers to get to and from work, complaining about property tax cost, complaining about utilities costs, complaining about the cost of providing health care to their workers, or what?
    (3) Then, address *those particular* problems. For instance, if businesses are going bust due to property taxes, cut property taxes. If the cost of providing health care is driving them out of business, provide a state health care system to take if off their backs. If goods transportation is an issue, provide subsidized rail and barge service, or build ports or transshipment stataions as needed. If worker transportation is a problem, provide cheap, high-quality public transportation. If they’re spending huge numbers of hours on red tape, find a way to reduce the red tape. If they can’t get business because everyone’s buying their stuff in a neighboring state with a lower sales tax, then you need to lower the sales tax.

    You can also ask businesses which considered moving to Buffalo why they decided *not* to, which would also identify the exact problems at issue.

    This is not really rocket science: it’s pure. It certainly has nothing to do with “job creation programs” of the sort you’re deriding, which are indeed pretty worthless.
    Don’t just do something brain-dead like thoughtlessly cutting the corporate income tax before identifying whether it’s really a problem, though.

  5. Nathanael Nerode says:
    November 8, 2006 at 5:11 pm

    To be fair, some of the most obvious problems have already been identified.

    (1) Counties should not have to pay any portion of Medicaid. This should be funded straight out of the state budget. Yes, this might require raising the top bracket state income tax. But it would allow the counties to make large property tax reductions, and that would be a far fairer tax distribution, and also one which is better for business.

    (2) Schools should not be funded from the property tax. Again, fund them straight out of the state income tax, raise the top brackets as necessary, and then abolish school property tax entirely.

    This would eliminate some of the largest drags on local government and economy and on the working class and elderly in the state. This stuff is bloody *obvious*, but the State Legislature cannot get its act together.

  6. BuffaloGeek says:
    November 8, 2006 at 10:39 pm

    To be fair, I have discussed on multiple occassions exactly what is needed to promote private enterprise in Upstate New York, “tax cuts” is shorthand for that platform of ideas. A quick search on my site will get you up to speed.

    To stick with the shorthand platform, a good start would be workers comp reform, Taylor Law Reform, and Scaffold Law reform. Reduction in unfunded state mandates which generally drive local municipal taxes would also be nice.

    Generally speaking, the corporate tax burden, excessive property taxes, high water rates, exorbitant power pricing, and high workers compensation costs have been identified by corporations as the major reasons for leaving.

    They register their complaints with the Buffalo Niagara Partnership and Buffalo Niagara Enterprise prior to leaving for greener pastures in more business friendly states.

    Sometimes, those organizations can broker reduced costs with the state on their behalf but many companies wonder why they even have to bother with endless negotiations when they can get a cheaper deal elsewhere with no negotiations.

 

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