To some people, it’s just
another way government can help the business community improve things for all
of us. For others, it’s a form of corporate welfare, public money headed to
those who need it least.
The County of Monroe Industrial Development Agency, an
arm of county government, provides assistance to businesses that are expanding,
building, renovating, or moving within the county. The help ranges from rebates
on equipment purchases to low-interest loans and tax abatements.
But not everyone is happy with the way those benefits are
dispensed. Bill McCoy has been watching COMIDA on behalf of the local activist
group Metro Justice for the past several years. Just within the last few months
he’s seen the agency approve assistance to Bazil’s restaurant for an entry area
for seaplanes, a low-rate loan on a truck for a Brockport contractor in
exchange for creating a single job, and rebates for a law firm moving from one
downtown office tower to another.
But McCoy says it’s not individual projects that bother
him most. It’s the sense that COMIDA has strayed from the purpose for which it
was created: encouraging industrial development.
“Subsidies should not go to retail and wholesale
businesses,” says McCoy, “because that doesn’t bring money into the community
from outside.” Furthermore, by assisting such businesses, COMIDA favors one
retailer or service provider over their competitors, he says.
McCoy hopes to meet with COMIDA’s new executive director,
Terry Slaybaugh, to discuss his concerns. Slaybaugh came to the agency a few
weeks ago after heading the county’s airport authority under successive
Republican administrations.
“When we talk to Terry Slaybaugh, one of the things I
want to suggest strongly is an economic-impact analysis,” says McCoy. That
would include studying whether one local company’s COMIDA benefits might be
offset by the job losses at another. If that’s happening, “there’s no net gain
to the community,” says McCoy. “It doesn’t do any good to shift jobs from one
store to another or one business to another.”
(Slaybaugh didn’t immediately respond to phone messages
seeking comment.)
Metro Justice is concerned about more than simply the types of businesses COMIDA
helps, says McCoy. The county is giving tax breaks to support private-sector
enterprises at a time when budget crunches have put even essential services on
the line, he says.
“Where we get hurt is the tax exemptions,” says McCoy.
“If the county gives county tax exemptions, somebody has to make that up, and
that’s us.”
COMIDA officials defend the use of tax abatements, saying
that they boost the local economy and generate more tax dollars than they cost.
“They’re grasping at straws,” says McCoy. “They’re
grasping at anything they can do to make it look like they’re doing something.”
COMIDA is grappling with forces beyond its control, says McCoy, including the
changing nature of the global economy. For example, no local IDA will ever be
able to stem the large-scale loss of US manufacturing jobs to developing
nations, he says.
Unless the agency reexamines its goals and methods, it
risks irrelevancy, McCoy says. It will be relegated to the realm of handing out
little favors to one local business at the expense of another.
“Why should one law firm get subsidies for expanding
their offices and buying new computers, telephones, copiers, whatever it is,”
says McCoy, “and another law firm not get that break? It doesn’t make sense.”
This month’s awards
The COMIDA board approved
benefits for the following companies at its December 21 meeting:
• HenriettaBuilding Supplies. Benefit: rebates on purchases of new trucks and office and
yard equipment. Anticipated growth: 4 fulltime jobs.
• Donald Hibsch Contractor LLC. Benefit: low-rate loan on
a new truck. Anticipated growth: 1 job.
• Underberg & Kessler law firm. Benefit: rebates on
computer and other equipment purchases associated with its move from Chase Square to Bausch and Lomb Place. Anticipated growth: 4 jobs.
• Emerson Oil Company, Inc. Benefit: low-rate loan to buy
a new truck. Anticipated growth: 2 jobs.
• Kovalsky-Carr Electric Supply Company, Inc. Benefit:
rebate on the purchase of a truck and a digital phone system. Anticipated
growth: 2 fulltime jobs.
• Bettina Properties, LLC. Benefit: property-tax
abatement to construct a new building for the Brockport-based Weinstein Dental
Group LLC, which plans to add 2 full-time employees.
• Metalico Lyell Acquisitions, Inc. Benefit: sales-tax
exemption to buy new recycling equipment and extend a concrete barrier.
Anticipated growth: 6 fulltime jobs.
• St. Paul
Properties, LLC. Benefits: sales and mortgage-tax exemptions for renovating the
vacant HarryFormanBuilding, 114-118 St. Paul Street, for mixed residential and retail use. Anticipated
growth: 7 or more jobs.
• 3111 South Winton Road, LLC: Benefit: sales and mortgage-tax exemptions for
renovations for Genesee Region Home Care’s move to the site. Anticipated
growth: 50 jobs.
This article appears in Dec 29, 2004 – Jan 4, 2005.
