Proposals would add to projects’ costs

Matthew Spina of the Buffalo News writes - “State legislation that would let industrial development agencies again offer tax-exempt financing to not-for-profit organizations has stalled in Albany by proposed reforms — one in particular:

Forcing those beneficiaries to pay the prevailing wage to the construction workers on their projects.

Lawyers for the Erie County IDA and County Executive Chris Collins recently proposed a way around the roadblock. They drafted a measure to let a special unit of Erie County’s IDA, rather than the IDA itself, arrange the cheaper, tax-exempt financing that hospitals, schools and colleges prefer for expansions.

Other counties are taking similar paths. All Collins and the county IDA needed was the County Legislature to go along. Then the tax-exempt financing arranged through the IDA’s “Industrial Land Development Corp.” would pass muster with the Internal Revenue Service.”

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