In an effort to make New York more business friendly, Governor Cuomo started a program called Start Up New York. It was designed to give incentives to businesses looking to bring their operations into the Empire State. As you can see from the commercial below, one such incentive is to allow businesses moving into the state to pay no taxes for ten years.

This sounds like an amazing thing for businesses to take advantage of.  As the commercial states:

“The New New York is open, open for innovation, open to ambition, open to bold ideas… Move here, expand here and pay no taxes for ten years… We’re New York, if there’s something that creates more jobs and grows more businesses we’re open to it.”

This program is like Governor Cuomo rolling out a red carpet for businesses if they move their operations to New York. But to be honest, it just sounded too good to be true. So EID hopped on the Start Up New York website and filled out all the necessary forms for a natural gas production and distribution company looking to move its operations to New York’s Southern Tier.

One would think an oil and gas company would be a perfect fit for the Start Up New York program, especially since the commercial states, “If there’s something that creates more jobs and grows more businesses we’re open to it.” Take a look across the border in Pennsylvania at the incredible job growth they continue to have since the first successful well was drilled a decade ago.

According to a recent study the oil and natural gas industry contributes an incredible $34.7 billion to the state economy, which makes up 5.8 percent of the states total economic activity. In Pennsylvania alone at least 1,347 businesses, spread across all 18 of Pennsylvania’s congressional districts, are part of the larger oil and natural gas supply chain. If that’s not job growth, than we’re not really sure what is.

PriceWaterHouseCoopers also conducted a study for the American Petroleum Institute, finding:

“The oil and natural gas industry in Pennsylvania supports some 339,000 jobs, which is 4.7 percent of the state’s total employment. The amount of Pennsylvania labor income supported by the oil and natural gas industry comes to $19.5 billion annually. That’s 5.1 percent of the state’s total labor income.”

There’s no question about it, shale development creates a vast amount of jobs and opportunities – one would even say it’s an innovative, bold and ambitious idea. So after filling out all the necessary online forms for EID’s own natural gas production and distribution company we waited patiently for Governor Cuomo to roll out his red carpet. Only, there was no red carpet and no tax free opportunity for someone in the natural gas production and distribution industry.

Instead we received this email from Start Up New York:

Sitting here thinking about it now, it really doesn’t make sense. New York continues to increase its natural gas usage and is even building out infrastructure and transitioning power plants to burn more because its environmental benefits are recognized. New Yorkers are even leaving the state and seeking employment in Pennsylvania’s thriving natural gas industry.

Unfortunately for those living in New York’s Southern Tier, it’s clear that the “New, New York” is not new at all.