On a campus music hall stage in Purchase, Gov. Andrew Cuomo  signed Start-Up NY legislation, launching a program that will yoke New York”™s academic intellectual capital and real estate with new and expanding companies in tax-free business zones on and near college campuses.
“I believe this has the potential to be a game-changer for the people of this state,” Cuomo told a morning audience Thursday on the SUNY Purchase campus.
The Start-UP NY program is aimed at spurring local economies and jobs creation in upstate communities by creating enterprise zones on some 55 SUNY campuses outside New York City and at selected private colleges north of Westchester. Businesses will operate without paying state taxes for 10 years while working in partnership with host schools on technology transfers and other commercial ventures.
Employees of start-ups and other businesses in the zones will be exempt from paying state income taxes on salaries up to $200,000.
Cuomo”™s Purchase stop was the first of three appearances he made Thursday on SUNY campuses, where he touted the results of the recently ended 2013 legislative session and his three-year record of achievement at bringing “consistency and stability” to a state government in Albany that he called “dysfunctional” and reliably late each year at adopting the state budget. He noted the budget has been adopted on time every year since he took office, a three-year string last achieved in New York 30 years ago.
Cuomo”™s end-of-session stumpy tour also took him to community colleges in Utica and Syracuse.
In Purchase, the Westchester-residing governor was flanked by Democrats representing the county in the state Senate and Assembly.
The governor”™s office in late May mounted an intensive publicity campaign for what then was called the governor”™s “Tax-Free NY” proposal. In a blitz of press conferences and news releases, the governor”™s office trotted out statements of support for the proposal from a statewide roster of public- and private-sector leaders that included party leaders in the state Legislature, SUNY presidents, economic development officials, business groups including The Business Council of Westchester, and mayors and other municipal officials from White Plains to Niagara Falls.
The detailed bill was introduced in the Legislature on June 20 and passed both the Senate and Assembly on June 21 in the waning hours of the 2013 session.
Cuomo said the program will create 120 million square feet of eligible tax-free space, more commercial space than in the cities of San Francisco and St Louis combined. The total eligible square footage also exceeds the combined commercial space of Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse, he said.
State Senate Minority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins joined other officials on the Purchase stage in praising Cuomo’s legislative successes this year. “Governor Cuomo has done more for the New York state economy in this session than any governor in history,” she said.
Marsha Gordon, president and CEO of The Business Council of Westchester and a member of the state Mid-Hudson Regional Economic Development Council, said Cuomo”™s administration is “without a doubt the most business-friendly state government in history.” Never before has the state”™s business community had an accessible and “proactive partner” in Albany, she said.
