A coalition of community, labor, faith, and student groups held a demonstration on Thursday, Oct. 1, at the Waterfront Place condominium complex in Buffalo to call for reforms to New York’s economic development programs, notably its Empire Zone and Industrial Development Agencies.
Organized by the Coalition for Economic Justice (CEJ), the action included a mock press conference lampooning Carl Paladino and Stephen Barnes for the controversial tax breaks they are guaranteed as a result of the City of Buffalo’s extension of its Empire Zone boundaries in 2006 to include the Waterfront Place property.
“I have to cry poverty,” Roger Cook, a member of CEJ and an actor in the skit, said as he parodied Paladino during the mock press conference. “Even though my development company has saved nearly $1 million in sales tax on building materials alone, I will only make an outrageous profit here, rather than an obscene one.”
The parody included a seven foot puppet designed to look like Tom Golisano, an upstate billionaire and founder of Paychex. An unnamed politician, performed by Eric Gallion, and Stephen Barnes, performed by Harrison Watkins, were also part of the skit.
Paladino, CEO of Ellicott Development Company, built Waterfront Place after the Erie Basin Marina was included in the city’s Empire Zone, giving condo buyers in an already wealthy neighborhood property tax breaks for at least 10 years. Barnes, of the law firm Cellino and Barnes, purchased a $1.1 million penthouse in the condominium complex in August 2009 that he will not have to pay property taxes on for seven years.
Organizers of the event said they targeted Paladino’s Waterfront Place development because it is an example of state government economic development programs wastefully using tax-payer dollars to subsidize projects that do not create quality jobs.
“The Empire Zone was intended to create jobs and investment in low-income communities,” Allison Duwe, Executive Director of CEJ said. “The Waterfront Place condos are a perverse inversion of this, where our city’s already overburdened lower and middle class taxpayers subsidize corporations and wealthy individuals.”
The rally was part of a nationwide call for economic recovery and reform. Across the country, thousands of people in more than a dozen cities gathered to mark the one-year anniversary of the federal government’s bank bail-out, condemn corporate welfare and demand economic development that creates quality jobs for community residents.
“One year ago Congress and the Federal Reserve bailed-out Wall Street and the banking industry,” said Micaela Shapiro-Shellaby, Lead Organizer with CEJ. “One year later workers are still losing their jobs and homes while the bailed-out banks continue to award executive bonuses and refuse to finance jobs. It is time for change in DC but it is also the right time for a new policy direction in New York State.”
With the Waterfront Place Condos as the backdrop for the event, CEJ specifically called for reform of Empire Zone and IDA programs.
“At a time when our economic future remains uncertain – with state and local governments anticipating great strains on resources – our state government needs to cut the wasteful spending on New Yorkers’ tax dollars on shortsighted and inefficient economic development subsidies,” Duwe said.
As a part of their reform platform, CEJ called on state leadership to:
- • Enact standards on New York’s Industrial Development Agency subsidy generating process to ensure that family-sustaining jobs are created by the expenditure of New Yorkers’ tax dollars.
- • Eliminate the Empire Zone program or reform it by enacting stricter qualifying criteria and effective monitoring mechanisms in order to target state aid to truly distressed communities.
At the end of the demonstration, organizers called on participants to call Governor Patterson’s office to demand reform to the state’s economic development programs. A dozen people immediately called the governor’s office and simultaneously left voicemail messages.
“These calls are about changing the way we do economic development,” said Eric Walker, Lead Organizer of PUSH-Buffalo. “We are giving away the store to people who can afford to pay their fair share of taxes. We are telling our elected officials to stop selling our communities short.”
For more info: Coalition for Economic Justice, buffalojobswithjustice.blogspot.com, jwj.org.
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