DiNapoli to audit Thruway?

Gov. and Mrs. Dewey open Thruway, 1954

While many Upstaters consider New York's economy already dead, billionaire Cuomo donor and Thruway honcho Howard Milstein wants to bury the corpse six feet deeper.  Milstein, an influence-buying  Manhattan tycoon, wants to raise Thruway truck tolls by a "modest" 45 percent.  While we suspect Milstein, Cuomo and their jet-setting pals could care less that about that massive increase in business costs, every penny of which will ultimately be paid by consumers, a handful of drowning New Yorkers are sending up a warning flare.

A major state business group is demanding a thorough audit of the state Thruway Authority before it raises tolls by what the authority called a "modest" 45 percent for larger trucks.

"We will all pay the price for this toll hike if we don't stand up and demand that the Thruway review its own finances before taking money from the rest of us," said Brian Sampson, executive director of Unshackle Upstate.

The toll increase on trucks with three or more axles would threaten distribution jobs and increase the costs of food, clothing and other articles hauled by trucks while slowing New York's "tenuous" economic recovery, he said Tuesday.

In what may turn out to be nothing more that a political smokescreen, Democrat New York state comptroller Tom DiNapoli  is hinting he may just audit the bloated Thruway Authority's books.

State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli opened the door to possibly auditing the Thruway Authority's financial books Tuesday as the agency seeks to push through a controversial 45 percent toll hike on trucks.

The comptroller said the agency failed to thoroughly implement many of the recommendations he made in 2009 when it pushed through a previous toll increase. Had the findings from that audit been followed, he said, "many of the same problems that exist today would have been addressed.''

"Our Thruway system helps sustain the upstate economy. Increasing tolls could have a negative impact on our fragile economic recovery and hurt small businesses and consumers,'' the comptroller warned.

Bold added.  A few surviving Upstate residents may recall that Thruway tolls were supposed to disappear when the bonds were paid off in 1996.

The Thruway was built beginning in the 1950s and tolls were supposed to have paid off the superhighway in 1996.

 Ah, yes, 1996:

Happily, some clarity from DiNapoli

New York State's top financial officer, Tom DiNapoli, got involved in politics in 1972, when he was elected to the Mineola Board of Education at age 18.  While he's as much a standard issue New York liberal Democrat as the next guy, we can assume that Tom likes his job and doesn't want to be held responsible for the Empire State's bankruptcy, or a potential Federal takeover leading the the dissolution of what was once the world's beacon of freedom and opportunity.  So it's no surprise that Tom might actually look into some of our rulers' more wasteful spending.

More tax breaks does not equal more jobs.

That's according to State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli's latest report on New York's industrial development agencies (IDAs).

In his fifth report on IDAs [PDF], DiNapoli says the number of jobs created by the local economic development engines dropped by 22,000 from the year before.

DiNapoli also cites a $483 million gap in what IDAs gave out in tax breaks and how much they took in via payments-in-lieu-of-taxes (PILOTs).

That breaks down, the report finds, to a $2,659 cost per job - up 9 percent from the year before.

"Taxpayers are not getting enough bang for their buck when it comes to IDAs," DiNapoli said in a statement.

Tom may be on to something, if Seneca County's IDA is any indication.  Rather than bringing the county a Toyota assembly plant or an Apple Computer research facility, the IDA seems to just be making work for itself.

The owner and operator of a proposed new McDonald’s Restaurant at 2500 Mound Road will likely receive financial assistance from the Seneca County Industrial Development Agency.

James Coriale, president of Jascor Inc., the owner-operator of the existing McDonald’s on Mound Road, has received town approval to demolish the existing building and construct a new restaurant on the same site.

It appears that struggling Finger Lakes taxpayers are once again being forced to subsidize a profitable business that, absent the generosity of the Seneca County IDA, most likely could have updated its facility without taxpayer cash.  Beneficiary James Coriale, a successful businessman, actually owns six McDonalds' restaurants.

"We look forward to a welcoming everyone to our grand re-opening later this year," said Coriale. Jim Coriale owns six McDonald’s Restaurants, with locations in Penn Yan and Ovid, in addition to McDonald's in Walmart locations in Camillus, Horseheads, & Watkins Glen.

We enjoy Mr. Coriale's restaurants and we congratulate him on building a successful business in one of the most anti-business climates in the US.  We just don't have any extra cash to invest right now, and it seems Tom DiNapoli may be starting to figure that out.