Money is a powerful incentive. It helps to explain why Micron Technology, the Idaho-based memory chips, is looking to create a store outside Siracuse-an area without any historical connection to the company, or to the production of semiconductors.
State officials, hoping to explode central New York from its economic thresholds, promised Micron $ 5.5 billion in money -like incentives in 2022.
But for this, Albany offered the company a whole more to overcome the obstacles and costs that other New York businesses face routinely.
From now on every business owner in the state, looking at his or her challenges, their tax bills, their regulatory burden, should ask the question: how different would be things if my company were a project Politically favored that was announced by the governor? What favors would Albany do for me?
What would Micron take?
Call it “Micron’s test.” Answers help identify the ways and extent in which New York makes it more difficult to do business more difficult – and describes specific changes that can make business action easier.
For beginners, Micron took a big start to the head to go through the Seqr (pronounced “€ œseekerâ), the extraordinary process of reviewing the New York environment.
SEQR, on a good day, requires developers to pay for studies and jump into pins to obtain a routine construction permit differently.
But the process is often abused by project opponents, and developers often need to be directed to the courts to help get things.
In short, it scares many developers away from the project proposal in New York, because there is so much uncertainty about how long the approval will receive “or if they will come at all.
Micron requires most to avoid that problem.
The Onondaga District Economic Development Agency will be the process of Micron’s SEQR, and has already completed-and has paid for detailed studies to make it easier to provide final signature in construction. State economic development officials are also providing a service of white gloves Micron.
And after the plant is built? The micron property bill will be just part of what he would do differently, thanks to a steep discount given by district officials.
Compare it to the existing New York companies, which have been granted in many parts of the state at a higher rate of property tax than those set in the occupied houses of the owners (read: voters).
Micron, of all the indications, will also enjoy a complete exception from the New York Corporate Income tax, which would otherwise shave about 7% off its profits.
Here, at least, Albany officials deserve loans for a 2014 change in tax law that excluded the largest producers from the state corporate income tax. But the smallest manufacturers, who are usually subject to personal income tax instead, are not so lucky.
Micron’s planned manufacturing operations reveal some of the most strict differences between the company and other New York businesses: State officials have promised to build a three-mile natural gas pipeline to strengthen the site.
However, for years state lawmakers have pressured to make it more expensive for new businesses to be connected to the gas network, and regulators have broken various proposed pipes that would provide the necessary supply.
The coercive supply means that parts of the New York City and Westchester County have not been able to add gas service at all.
A city about 50 miles south of Micron’s proposed site has been under a gas moratorium for a decade, preventing the opening of new restaurants and other businesses.
For the largest manufacturers competing in the global market, access to gas can be essential. When a paper factory at the Essex County upstate could not extend a pipeline, the operator had to return to a pipeline € œVirtual “day
To meet the rest of his energy needs, Micron is being calculated in electricity deducted from the State Energy Authority. Preliminary calculations estimate savings by about $ 3 million a year after the plant launches major operations.
Other New York companies receive electricity marked by massive hydroelectric dams of the Energy Authority, but Micronâ would so far be the largest deduction in terms of the amount of electricity involved.
Instead of trying to stanch (or distract from) the economic bleeding with high-profile mega-projects like Micron, New York Poles must roll their sleeves-and begin to roll things that don’t make it more expensive to do business in new York in the first place.
Ken Girardin is the director of the research at the Empire Center for Public Policy and the author of his latest report â € œthe Micron Test.â €
