Cut taxes, ease environmental regulations, allow cheap energy: imagine if a state did this for all its businesses or, shockingly, if it were done throughout the country?
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“New York: We’re open for business. The right business, at the right price”
If these measures can help one business, why not unleash them all?
New York businesses get shafted as Albany showers $5.5B, endless aid on Idaho’s Micron
Money is a powerful incentive. It helps explain why Micron Technology, the Idaho-based memory chip manufacturer, is looking to set up shop outside Syracuse — an area with no historical link to the company, or to semiconductor manufacturing.
State officials, hoping to break Central New York out of its economic doldrums, promised Micron $5.5 billion in cash-like incentives in 2022.
But on top of that, Albany offered the company a whole lot more to overcome obstacles and costs that other New York businesses routinely face ….
For starters, Micron got a big head-start in getting through SEQR (pronounced “seeker”), New York’s onerous environmental review process.
SEQR, on a good day, requires developers to pay for studies and jump through hoops to get permission for otherwise routine construction.
But the process is frequently abused by project opponents, and developers often have to turn to the courts for help getting things unstuck.
In a nutshell, SEQR scares many developers away from even proposing projects in New York, because there’s so much uncertainty about how long approvals will take — or if they’ll come at all.
Micron looks for the most part to be avoiding that problem.
Onondaga County’s economic development agency will be quarterbacking Micron’s SEQR process, and has already conducted — and paid for — detailed studies to make it easier to give the final sign-off on construction. State economic development officials are also giving Micron white-glove service.
And once the plant is built? Micron’s property tax bill will be just a fraction of what it otherwise would, thanks to a steep discount granted by county officials.
Compare that to existing New York companies, who are saddled in many parts of the state with a higher property tax rate than what’s levied on owner-occupied homes (read: voters).
Micron, by all indications, will also enjoy a complete exemption from New York’s corporate income tax, which would otherwise shave about 7% off its profits.
Micron’s planned manufacturing operations reveal some of the starkest differences between the company and other New York businesses: State officials have promised that it can build a three-mile natural gas pipeline to power the site.
Yet for years state lawmakers have been pushing to make it more costly for new businesses to tie into the gas grid, and regulators have thwarted various proposed pipelines that would provide the needed supply.
The tightening supply means that parts of New York City and Westchester County have periodically been unable to add gas service at all.
One town about 50 miles south of the proposed Micron site has been under a gas hookup moratorium for a decade, preventing new restaurants and other businesses from opening.
For bigger manufacturers competing in the global market, access to gas can be crucial. When a paper plant in upstate Essex County couldn’t get a pipeline extended, the operator had to turn to a “virtual pipeline” — trucked-in deliveries of compressed natural gas, with drivers making several hour-long trips each day.