Comment Re:"ONLY" 76? Holy COW! (Score 1) 238
It's due to how screwed-up NY state politics are.
NY used to have a House representing "the people" and a Senate representing "geography". Similar to the US House and Senate. The result of this was upstate NY was able to get some attention and benefits from the state government, because the NY City-dominated House had to negotiate with the upstate-dominated Senate.
Then a resident of NY City sued, citing the NY State Constitution's requirement that each person be represented equally. And won. The result was the state Senate was changed to also be based on population. Since NY city is roughly half of NY state's population, upstate NY was more-or-less politically abandoned for decades. At the same time, the deindustrialization of upstate NY (and the rest of the Rust Belt) utterly devastated the upstate NY economy.
This program is an attempt to start reversing some of that pain. Resulting in a somewhat odd program - there are virtually no major industries left in upstate NY to receive the tax breaks you propose. They need to import something.
But it's going to be a very hard sale. The area has been suffering from major economic depression for a very long time. Even the "successful" cities look old and dreary, and there is the palpable sense that everything has either gone to hell, or will be going to hell soon. It's going to be very hard to get someone to decide to move their business into that environment. Heck, even the locals desperately hope their children grow up to move somewhere better. Like Detroit.