Assemblyman Tom O’Mara (R,I,C-Big Flats) today blasted the Assembly Majority for negotiating the economic development portion of this year’s state budget behind closed doors and without input from business leaders and local governments. 

Assemblyman O’Mara voted against the budget bill because it slashes economic development funding by more than half and only leaves the state with $50 million to invest in job creation and economic growth this year.  The bill also allows the state’s Empire Zone program to expire.  

            “With over 800,000 New Yorkers unemployed and the economy still reeling from the recent economic downturn, Assembly Democrats decided to push through a budget that cuts economic development funding to the bone and eliminates the most successful job creating program in state history,” said O’Mara. “This is the height of fiscal irresponsibility.”

Locally, the Empire Zone program has been hugely successful across the Southern Tier/Finger Lakes region, creating thousands of jobs at such local companies as Sikorsky/Schweizer, Synthes, DeMet’s Candy, Vulcraft/NUCOR Steel, Corning Incorporated (Diesel Plant and Sullivan Park), and the new CVS distribution facility currently under construction. 

            “To revitalize New York’s economy and create jobs across Upstate New York, the Legislature should be expanding economic development programs, not contracting them,” said O’Mara.  “Unfortunately, the new economic development program, Excelsior Jobs; not only has less funding to operate with, but is restricted to certain industries and makes it tougher for businesses to get access to needed funding.”

            “This is not the economic development plan that the state needs to move itself out of the economic downturn,” said O’Mara. “It is just more of the same irresponsible budgeting that New Yorkers unfortunately have come to expect.”