We’ve flagged the insane waste of ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Buffalo Billion tasks for years, particularly its centerpiece, the one-time SolarCity plant. Nonetheless, The Wall Road Journal’s report on the insanity shocked us.
New York taxpayers constructed a nearly-$1 billion, 1.2 million sq.-ft., quarter-mile lengthy plant; the state’s since offered off $240 million in out of date tools from it and is now amassing a $1-a-year lease cost for the location.
The promised manufacturing of 9,000-10,000 photo voltaic panels a day is at present 21 installations a week.
As a result of the photo voltaic business did not growth as Cuomo imagined it could, SolarCity was going belly-up when Elon Musk had Tesla purchase it.
And the plant employs nothing like the three,000-plus employees Cuomo promised eight years in the past. Certainly, many of the 1,700 jobs it hosts are Tesla information analysts, on-site solely to satisfy the unique deal’s minimal ensures.
And, for all of the vows of latest companies the plant would lure to the world, the one one which’s truly opened is a espresso store.
In a scathing August 2020 report, state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli stated that the state would solely web 54 cents in “financial profit” for each greenback it spent on the plant.
All of which ought to solid contemporary doubt on Gov. Kathy Hochul’s central “financial growth” scheme, the multibillion-dollar Micron Fab 8 chip-manufacturing mission in Malta.
As we’ve warned, that plan is already wanting prefer it’ll fall far in need of the gov’s election-year guarantees.
Rational financial growth technique focuses on creating a sexy enterprise local weather — low taxes; affordable and predictable rules; dependable, low-cost energy.
As an alternative, New York provides the other on each entrance, whereas pretending a bunch of politicians can efficiently guess what the industries of the long run will probably be after which utilizing taxpayer money to bribe such firms into opening right here. No surprise the state can’t cease dropping floor.
