Jobs, Jobs, Jobs

The word “jobs” appeared over 20 times in Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s State of the State speech, underscoring the importance the governor places on growing New York’s economy in his second year in office.

“Our challenge for 2012 is this: How does government spur job creation in a down economy while limiting spending and maintaining fiscal discipline?” Cuomo said.

In his speech, Cuomo laid the groundwork for his jobs agenda, calling for another round of public grants to be doled out through the system of regional economic councils he created last year. He wants to create a network of public-private partnerships to offset the lack of new money. And his plan to spend up to $25 billion in infrastructure improvement across the state is intended to spur job growth and revitalize depressed communities upstate.

But not all of the members of the Legislature are fully on board with this proposal. Assemblyman Robin Schimminger, who chairs the Economic Development, Job Creation, Commerce and Industry Committee, said he would seek more legislative oversight for the regional councils during the budget process.

“I’m not quite sure which projects would or could not have been funded through traditional delegation, member and legislative funding processes,” said Schimminger, a western New York Democrat. “As we go forward, we will now have an intervening state budget process, where there may be refinements and clarifications to the regional council process.”

This may come as a surprise to Cuomo, who has held up the regional council model as a successful way to bring competing groups to the table and force them to come to a consensus. But it wouldn’t equal the shock many western New Yorkers felt when they heard the governor say he wanted to pump $1 billion into economically depressed Buffalo.

“I was super surprised,” said Andrew Rudnick, president and CEO of the Buffalo-Niagara Partnership and a member of the western New York regional council. “No one had an inkling of this.”

Rudnick said he is “cautiously ecstatic” about the investment. “We realize there are a lot of steps and a lot of devilish details to be played out and understood before we do anything with it,” he said.

Cuomo is putting his money where his mouth is, having doled out $785 million through the regional councils last year and proposing an additional $200 million be handed out this year. Kenneth Adams, president and CEO of the Empire State Development Corp., said his agency would be tasked with developing report cards on each regional council to determine how well they spent the money and how many jobs are being created.

“Part of restoring confidence in state government is you have to increase transparency, demand accountability and tell a story with facts,” Adams said.

Later this year, Lt. Gov. Robert Duffy will convene a meeting of all of the chairmen of the regional councils to develop a plan to ease the regulatory burden on state businesses.

Rob Simpson, president of the Syracuse-based CenterState Corporation for Economic Opportunity and co-chair of the central New York regional council, said the state’s business leaders will be watching that process closely and continuing to urge the governor to reform the pension system and further refine the state’s tax code.

“People pick up and move to Florida or Arizona or other low-cost states in reaction to what New York State has done on a tax policy level,” Simpson said. “And I think we need to be ever conscious of that.”

ahawkins@cityandstateny.com