ALBANY, N.Y. - The billions of dollars spent on Industrial Development Authorities in New York are not creating "measurable benefits," according to a new report.

The latest Authorities Budget Office report found significant problems at many of the 578 public authorities now operating in New York. These public authorities are often created to work outside the state budget process to spur economic development. While the number of authorities has grown by 200 percent in less than 20 years, Alex Camarda, senior policy consultant for Reinvent Albany, said they simply are not doing what they were supposed to do.

"While most authorities exist for the purposes of economic development, they have no direct impact on private-sector job growth, whatsoever," he said. "We think that's a real indictment of the very purpose of many of these authorities."

The report found the three counties with the highest number of projects approved by local authorities showed growth in private-sector employment, but at levels below the state average.

While authorities get money from the state, they also can issue bonds and currently have a combined total debt of almost $270 billion. Camarda called that a real problem for transparency and accountability.

"It's not honestly portraying the debt and obligations that the state owes," he said, "which is a real burden on taxpayers, particularly over time as the amount of debt accumulates."

The report also said almost half of procurement money spent by local authorities is not subject to competitive bidding and it identifies a number of serious ethics violations.

These problems persist despite major reforms in 2005 and 2009, Camarda said, so the solution may be to stop creating more of them.

"We would like to see fewer authorities," he said. "We would like to see their responsibilities and duties centralized, and there should be a real reduction, particularly in local development corporations."

He said many responsibilities now entrusted to public authorities could be taken on by state agencies.

The report is online at abo.ny.gov.


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Four east Texas communities will share more than $1 million in grant money to upgrade their radio infrastructure systems.

The grants are funded by House Bill 442 from 2011 and construction is slated to start next year.

Lindsay Vanderbilt, director of communications for the East Texas Council of Governments, said smaller communities do not have the budgets to upgrade equipment regularly and the funds will improve security for first responders and the community.

"It's kind of a lot of technology that people don't think about," Vanderbilt pointed out. "In the governmental world, these are systems that are in place to handle emergency response and to back up that response system for safety. "

The projects will take place in Rains, Harrison and Van Zandt counties and the City of Kilgore.

Funds in the State Emergency Radio Infrastructure program are distributed by the governor's office. Vanderbilt noted the council of governments is the primary planning entity for 911 communications in 14 east Texas counties.

"It's very common for these opportunities to get proposed to us by the state, and then we connect with our local governments and we reach out to them to see who has needs and who would be eligible to apply," Vanderbilt outlined.

She added the Rains County project will address a serious communications problem.

"They're currently having severe operability issues and it's actually keeping their officers and their dispatch from being able to communicate effectively all the time," Vanderbilt observed. "That's a safety risk for the officers, it is for the public."

Other projects include construction of new Motorola towers and expansion of the TX-WARN program, which works with water and wastewater utilities during system outages.


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A new study provides New York State with an outline of necessary updates to its school funding formula.

The Rockefeller Institute study called for improving several areas such as the Regional Cost Index, which has not been updated in 18 years. Other focus areas include the poverty metric, which does not give a comprehensive picture of students' needs.

Randi Levine, policy director for Advocates for Children of New York, said other updates should have been considered.

"We're disappointed that there are no recommendations to add weight for students experiencing homelessness and students in foster care so that schools can better meet their needs to provide per-pupil funding for preschoolers in pre-K and 3-K," Levine explained.

She added the provisions could be passed through bills introduced by lawmakers.

More than 155,000 New York State public school students were homeless during the 2022-2023 school year. Of those, 120,000 were New York City Public School students. Columbia University found the current Foundation Aid formula uses poverty numbers from the 2000 Census and cost-of-living averages from 2006.

The Rockefeller Institute study suggested numerous ways for lawmakers to update the school funding formula. However, Levine argued some of them must be assessed for their efficacy, including a recommendation to update the poverty measure and provide a different way to measure it.

"The study provides a few different ways of doing that," Levine observed. "The study notes one of the proposals for how to change that weight would result in New York City seeing a projected decrease of around $392 million."

Other recommendations in the report included using a scaling aid approach to better supply funding for students with disabilities, a new adjustment based on instruction service hours for English Language Learners and letting school districts use Foundation Aid dollars for general education purposes, rather than regimented direct spending.


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New York could see major effects from President-elect Donald Trump's proposed budget cuts.

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy's Department of Government Efficiency is set to slice $2 trillion in federal spending. While their focus is cutting agency budgets and the government's workforce, safety nets will be in their crosshairs.

Joan Alker, executive director of the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families, said states will have flexibilities if cuts occur, but they will make using services harder.

"In practice, these flexibilities will mean things like cutting back eligibility, adding red tape so that it's harder for families and people to get through the process, which cuts down on enrollment," Alker explained. "We know that from the unwinding that we've just been through."

She added benefits could be limited and providers who see a lot of low-wage working families might face reimbursement cuts. There has been consideration to cut Medicaid's expansion match rate to a regular rate, which would move most costs to states. Estimates show New York's cost for expansion group under a reduced federal match rate could be more than $5 billion, if it occurs.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program could face cuts as well.

Mayra Alvarez, president of the Children's Partnership, said the proposed changes outlined in Project 2025 could make the program harder to access while increasing inefficiencies.

"Everything from increasing time limits for the program for adults without dependents," Alvarez outlined. "Also, eliminating categorical eligibility, which would remove the state options of increasing the gross income limits from 130 % of the poverty line to up to 200%."

In 2022, 53% of SNAP participants in New York were families with children, and close to 3 million people statewide relying on the program. Nationwide, SNAP has helped lift more than 3.4 million people out of poverty in 2023.