NY state Assembly may allow crackdown on Empire Zone abuses

The Syracuse Post-Standard reports – “For years, state legislators criticized the Empire State Development Corp. for allowing abuses in the Empire Zone tax break program.

But after the state’s economic development agency announced it was kicking 544 businesses out of the tax break program, the politically fractured Senate voted 57-0 to postpone the crackdown.

The Assembly may take up an identical bill when it returns in session.

But one of the bill’s co-sponsors, William Magnarelli, D-Syracuse, said he no longer thinks the Assembly will pass it.

“I do not think the Assembly bill will be passed. I believe the Senate passed this as a ‘feel-good measure,’” Magnarelli said.

Delaying the effective date of the Empire Zone decertifications by one year — as proposed by the bills — would cost New York about $90 million, said a spokesman for Gov. David Paterson.”

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