1. $50 million in equipment for Tesla’s Buffalo plant sits unused in a warehouse. Empire State Development, New York State’s chief economic development arm, is still searching for a buyer.
State Senator Sean Ryan on the billion-dollar Tesla deal: “It has not lived up to our hopes or our dreams. “It hasn’t done anything.”
2. Elon Musk’s Saturday Night Live appearance is “not funny to New York’s taxpayers,” writes Nicholas Waddy in the NY Daily News.
[Musk] has consistently failed to deliver. As a result, the state had to write down its investment by an eye-popping $884 million. That’s an unheard-of level of depreciation.
3. At Boondoggle, Pat Garofalo details the findings of a new study: When legislative races are competitive, politicians give away more subsidies to big corporations, ultimately making it more difficult for small businesses to compete. A quote from the study itself, by Manav Raj:
“When legislative competition is high, well-connected incumbent firms are better able to leverage familiarity, access, and influence to take advantage of this opportunity and transform the institutional environment. Policy rewards to well-connected incumbent firms may have negative consequences for younger, less-connected firms and implications for the entrepreneurial environment.”
And don’t miss our post on the major shortcomings of the “Database of Economic Incentives” and why the legislature needs to pass a Database of Deals.
If you got this from a friend, sign up here. Subsidy Sheet is written by Tom Speaker, Policy Analyst at Reinvent Albany. Please send questions and tips to tom [at] reinventalbany.org. We look forward to hearing from you!