Relates to prohibiting the use of funds, financial incentives or subsidies where facilities or property are used primarily for e-commerce storage and transfers…

◆ The sponsor's argument

Why James Skoufis says this is needed

Industrial development agencies, or IDAs, exist primarily to incentivize economic development by attracting businesses and creating jobs. The incentives offered by IDAs often include the waiving state and local taxes, which results in significant loss over the term of the incentive, and in return often only provides a few minimum wage or low wage jobs. Additionally, many incentives have recently been given to large multina- tional corporations at the expense of New York Taxpayers. New York IDA subsidies given to Amazon have diverted a quarter billion dollars in just the past two years. This was not the legislative intent when IDAs were established in 1969 to improve economic conditions and facilitate economic development in localities. This bill would prohibit IDAs from offering incentives for e-commerce storage and transfer facilities often given to large, multi-billion-dol- lar corporations with dubious economic growth projections at the expense of local municipalities and their residents.

This is the sponsor's own case for the bill, quoted from their memorandum. It is not Agora's description of what the bill does.