The Buffalo News, June 25, 2008, Wednesday

The Buffalo News

June 25, 2008, Wednesday

The Buffalo News

Reform will hold IDAs accountable and help Buffalo
By Lou Jean Fleron

In the first hot sun of June, citizens rallied in front of the Erie County Industrial Development Agency on Oak Street behind a banner that read “Living Wages for a Livable City.” Passing traffic in old and new cars, delivery vans and 18-wheelers honked their votes for decent jobs and living wages.

Those votes need to be translated into the passage of Assemblyman Sam Hoyt’s IDA reform legislation that will establish job standards, accountability measures, transparency procedures and environmental standards in exchange for public subsidies to private businesses.

Across New York, local IDAs deal with our money, handing out more than $400 million per year in tax breaks, too often providing subsidies that fail to promote real economic development and do not deliver the jobs they promise.

Quality job standards are good for workers, for communities, and also for business. The top 10 “pro-business states” — Virginia, South Carolina, Florida, North Carolina, Utah, Wyoming, South Dakota, Alabama, Georgia and Nebraska — all have enacted wage standards on development subsidies.

Prevailing wage requirements also benefit taxpayers and working families. A recent study of Federal Highway Administration data found that costs per mile of highway are lower among those states which pay higher hourly wages. Because of higher productivity, the high-wage states averaged over $30,000 per mile savings to taxpayers.

Here in the Queen City, the second poorest city in America, nearly 29 percent of us live in poverty. Good jobs with health care, benefits and pensions continue to disappear. Auto workers are forced to take “buy downs” to gradually lower their standard of living to satisfy the insatiable greed of global capital markets.

Poverty, joblessness and inequality are the reasons we have economic development policies. We cannot afford to continue to perpetuate these conditions by continuing to subsidize failure. Upstate New Yorkers need good jobs, not just any jobs, as a return on our investment in business development.

In this celebrated and proud blue-collar town, people spontaneously support wages that allow families to live self-sufficiently, educate their children, buy their homes and contribute to their communities. When we give up tax revenues needed for schools, roads, parks, libraries, public safety and public health, we expect to receive in exchange living wage jobs.

The drive-by living wage supporters on Oak Street honked in solidarity because in Buffalo we stand, as Tim Russert said, “side by side, shoulder by shoulder.” Our history and our experiences teach us that a strong local economy will be built only on good jobs that attract and retain a skilled work force. That is the primary purpose of IDAs. It is time we held them accountable.

Lou Jean Fleron is director of workforce, industry and economic development at the Cornell University Industrial and Labor Relations School in Buffalo.