Late Sunday, Governor Andrew Cuomo and state legislative leaders announced that they had a basic agreement around the 2015-16 state budget. And that agreement, they said, included the governor’s request for $1.5 billion to fund the Upstate Revitalization Competition.

But yesterday, the whole matter got a little hazy. Senate Republican Majority Leader Dean Skelos made some remarks about all seven Upstate region’s getting a piece of the pie, and some key staffers weren’t even sure whether the Upstate Revitalization Competition would be a competition, after all. 

The picture cleared a bit, overnight. Here’s my understanding of what’s happening: the $1.5 billion in the budget will indeed be awarded competitively; the seven Upstate regions — the Buffalo-Niagara region excluded — will compete for one of three $500 million awards.

The awards, according to one source, will theoretically clear the way for the other four regions to receive some extra funding during the Regional Economic Development Council process.

The winning Upstate regions in the Revitalization Competition would get capital funding for projects; the capital funding available through the Regional Economic Development Councils would probably be focused on the regions that didn’t win the competition. 

Don’t take any of this as gospel. But it’s the most complete picture I’ve been able to put together on an issue that’s still being negotiated.

This article appears in Mar 25-31, 2015.

Covers county government and whatever else comes my way. Greyhound dad; vegetarian; attempted photographer with a love for film and fixer; sometimes cyclist.

4 replies on “About that Upstate Revitalization Competition…”

  1. This is so stupid. While my first thought is always lower taxes, we all know that will never happen with the long term leadership in NY. So, that being said, why isn’t Rochester receiving $1 billion like Buffalo? We have a larger economy, higher wages and higher property values. In short, we pay at least as much as they do in taxes. Buffalo lost 25,000 steel jobs, but we lost 55,000 jobs at Kodak alone. So where is the Rochester Billion?

  2. The money given to Buffalo was not a billion as reported by the media. The second fact is that Buffalo is much larger than Rochester, Syracuse, Ithaca, Utica, and so on. A third fact is that Buffalo was a huge manufacturing city that did not make the transition to information technology and service as well as the other cities mentioned such as Rochester and Syracuse. Buffalo will be in a better position from today onto and into the next 30 years. However, it is still tough to find work anywhere in Western and Upstate NY . Rochester and the Finger Lakes have faired better than all other areas except Buffalo when it comes to tax money distributed Upstate. The challenge is getting the money from Down State back to this area. May I remind that Down State generates the most tax revenue in the entire state because of population, Wall Street and political representation. “It is what it is” Just some thoughts

  3. crm, Buffalo is not “much larger” than Rochester as you say. The stats currently are B- 1,130,000, R-1,084,000. Basically Equivalent to one more Irondequoit. And if you put R & B on a graph over the last fifty years you will see Rochester continually growing as Buffalo shrank. The momentum is with Rochester.

  4. Buffalo gets a BILLION dollars from Cuomo and Erie County is one of the few Upstate counties that Cuomo carries in his re-election in November. Hmmmm. Now seven upstate “regions” – as defined by Cuomo – must COMPETE between themselves for only three $500 million grants. Winners are to be judged and awarded by Cuomo while the losers get ZIP, ZERO. How can anyone call this fair?

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