Campaign Unavailable

We have an opportunity right now to fix our state’s main economic development program, Industrial Development Agencies (IDAs). For forty years, IDAs have handed out no-strings-attached subsidies to businesses that promise to create new jobs and strengthen our local economies. But all too often, IDAs give subsidies to companies that fail to live up to their promises; that create no new jobs, create poverty-wage jobs, or actually cut jobs. We’re literally wasting hundreds of millions of dollars each year on failed IDA projects, and local taxpayers are left shouldering the burden.

With our state facing huge deficits, record unemployment, and families struggling to make ends meet, we need to fix this broken program, so it can begin to create the good jobs that we need now and contribute to our long-term economic recovery. IDA reform legislation has been championed by State Legislators, the New York State Comptroller, and Labor, Community, and Environmental advocacy groups throughout the state. It has passed in the Assembly the last three years, and passed out of Senate committee earlier this year before being stalled like everything else in Albany this summer. Governor Patterson proposed legislation to kick start IDA reform and get it passed before the end of this year, but we need your help to make that happen.

Please email your legislators in the Assembly and Senate today and let them know that you support IDA reform. Use the sample letter below to urge them to act now to fix our IDAS--it’s time we get our money’s worth.