Strong Smell of Fish From Cuomo's Bacon

Insight on the News, Oct 22, 2001 by John Elvin

Andrew Cuomo, the former secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and notorious grandstander, now hopes to follow in the footsteps of his father, Mario, and become governor of New York. Among the reasons he supposes New Yorkers will give him the vote is the "Canal Corridor Initiative" he put in place while at the helm of HUD. The Empire State's 524 miles of canal were built in robust industrial days a's corridors of commerce, but today they serve only as minor tourist attractions. The theory behind HUD's $200 million loan/grant program was that it create jobs for workers in hard-strapped upstate New York communities that industry has abandoned.

Exactly how these jobs might be created apparently was a bit of a puzzle to the theoreticians at HUD, so they left the deal open-ended. Localities could come up with their own programs. When the dust settled, around 60 different organizations received approval for their ideas on how to carve the pie Cuomo delivered. Local newspapers echoed the proclamations of business and civic leaders who were in on the various deals to the effect that thousands of new jobs were coming to the canal corridor as a result. The $200 million would generate 27,000 new jobs, it was said.

So, recently, HUD decided to take a look at the harvest wrought by its seed money. Officials picked 12 organizations and their projects for audit, according to a report in the Schenectady Gazette newspaper. These projects were by now to have generated 1,338 new jobs for areas where employment opportunities fluctuate between scarce and none. In fact, the auditors found, only 153 new jobs had resulted.

Oddly enough, none of the politicians, business executives and civic leaders who were given the $200 million to spread around locally seem to feel that the program is anything less than a big success. A member of one local organization established specifically to obtain HUD money for a project that was to create 30 jobs said it's tree that no jobs have been created, so "there will probably need to be an amendment to the [funding] application."