How pathetic are New York’s economic-development efforts? Well, state officials were just caught illustrating the programs’ “success” with a photo of seven huge construction cranes . . . in South Africa.
The Associated Press discovered the misleading picture in the Empire State Development’s first annual report, released this month. Not only was the pic of a scene in Cape Town, it was from 2010, the year before Gov. Cuomo took office.
At a minimum, the glitch speaks volumes about the competence of the hacks running Cuomo’s economic-development show.
Worse, it raises the suspicion that relevant photos would underwhelm: After all, several of the projects Cuomo’s built now sit half- or even totally empty.
The report’s words were plenty misleading, too. It bragged, for example, that New York’s “economy has steadily expanded since 2010,” citing unemployment that fell to below 5 percent in 2017, down from 9 percent in 2010.
Except that the state’s joblessness rate often lags the nation’s: It was 4.6 percent here in December and 4.7 percent in November, for example, compared to just 4.1 percent nationwide for both months.
And while the city’s economy has been strong, western and northern New York are dying, with young people moving away (or giving up on looking for work) because jobs are so scarce.
The report boasts that Cuomo’s Buffalo Billion is creating “an environment conducive to private investment and job growth in Western New York.” But the truth is that the $1.5 billion spent on the program has arguably led to more corruption than jobs: As two New York Federal Reserve analysts noted last October, “job growth slowed to a crawl in Buffalo” in early 2016, and Rochester actually lost jobs.
Fact is, for all the billions in taxpayer dollars Cuomo spends on “development,” New York’s economy — particularly upstate — is severely underperforming.
For that, thank his high taxes, heavy regulation, fracking ban and energy policies that drive up costs for businesses and residents.
A fake photo is the least of it.