A Texas-sized burr has just landed under the saddle of Andrew Cuomo. Its name is Rick Perry. On Sunday, the Texas governor will kick off a five-day visit with a message he’s already running in local media:
If you’re tired of the same old recipe of over-taxation, over-regulation and frivolous litigation, get out before you go broke. Texas is calling . . . your opportunity awaits.
Even the name of the Texas Web site for Perry’s campaign — TexasWideOpenForBusiness.com — is a dig at our governor’s “New York Open for Business” campaign. This isn’t Perry’s first rodeo, either. He’s taken the same message to other high-tax blue states from California to Illinois, pointing out the many advantages of Texas: no state income tax, light regulation and a whole lot more jobs and opportunity.
Not that Cuomo’s rolling over. To the contrary, he’s been trying to use the zero income-tax rate in Texas as a reason New York’s Legislature should pass his plan to create tax-free zones around mostly upstate universities. “Talk about a move overnight that would level the playing field, that’s the tax-free zones,” Cuomo said at a press conference this week.
Give the governor credit for recognizing what so many others in Albany do not: We must compete with other states and other countries for capital and enterprise.
Unfortunately, the tax-free zones touted by Cuomo only highlight the merits of Perry’s argument. While New York politicians finagle with the tax code to carve out special treatment for favored enterprises, the whole state of Texas is a tax-free zone. Maybe that’s why $1.6 billion in adjusted gross income relocated from New York to Texas from 1992 to 2010, according to Travis Brown’s “How Money Walks.”
Now, the last thing we want to see is even more businesses and individuals fleeing New York. But as big believers in competition, we welcome Gov. Perry. And we will all know the Empire State is really as open for business as Gov. Cuomo claims when a New York governor has a message he can sell in Houston.