Three Subsidy Stories You Might Have Missed This Week

1. At Boondoggle, Pat Garofalo writes about why massive subsidies for the Buffalo Bills are a terrible idea. 

There have been a lot of numbers thrown around since talks over a new Bills stadium became public a few weeks ago. The one thing they have in common is they are all very large. Current reporting suggests the proposed stadium has a cost of $1.4 billion, with the team wanting all or nearly all of it covered by the public […] If the final number comes anywhere close to that, it will be the largest stadium subsidy in American history.

2. GlobalFoundries – which has already received over a billion from New York – asked the courts for a $220 million tax refund from the state and lost (Times Union).

GlobalFoundries CEO Tom Caulfield was all smiles on July 19 when he announced to a crowd of VIPs – including U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo – that the computer chipmaker would be building a second factory at its Fab 8 campus, home to 3,000 workers […] But just days before, GlobalFoundries had gotten some bad news. An administrative law judge for the state’s Division of Tax Appeals had ruled that GlobalFoundries had failed to convince her that the company was entitled to a nearly $220 million tax refund it had claimed under the state’s former Empire Zone program.

3. The Times Union is the latest to report that Samsung is still strongly considering building a semiconductor plant in upstate Genesee County.

It is unclear what the state of New York would offer Samsung to locate at STAMP […] GlobalFoundries received a $1.4 billion incentive package to build its Fab 8 factory in Saratoga County where it employs 3,000 people, and Cree, a North Carolina company that makes power electronics chips, received a $600 million state grant to build its new factory outside of Utica. The Samsung factory would employ 1,800 people.

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