Big tax breaks look like corporate welfare
BRIAN ACKLEY Political Columnist
As most of us enjoy a bountiful Thanksgiving Day smorgasbord, there are a few political

dishes that range from a forkful of dry turkey to warm, homemade apple pie a la mode, that deserve more than just a menu mention.

. ITEM - Let's see, $68 million or so public dollars to lure Bass Pro as an anchor for Buffalo waterfront redevelopment - a good slice of which will go toward public infrastructure improvements that will benefit far more than just Bass Pro itself - draws the ire of many as some kind of corporate welfare.

But $79 million in tax breaks, mostly the sales tax kind, to bribe one of the world's largest banks to add 12 jobs, is supposed to be a "feather in our cap," according to Amherst IDA chief Jim Allen.

The problem isn't that major corporations are awarded tax breaks to invest in our region, because it's true that there are a dozen other states that would offer deals as well. It's that for years now, decades in fact, tax breaks are simply being used to save jobs, not create them, as this recent HSBC deal underscores.

In many cases, the billions that have collectively been given away by industrial development agencies haven't spurred growth. At best, it's sustained a status quo that isn't worth sustaining. And as the most recent economic data shows, it isn't even doing a very good job of that. Some 1,700 manufacturing jobs disappeared in Buffalo Niagara in the last year, while only 900 service sector jobs were created.

Naturally, we'll be lectured about how we don't understand big business, or how IDAs work, and that we should bow down for the taxpayer-funded crumbs onto which we can hold. And spare us the "it's only a sales tax abatement" argument. The incentive comes a week after Comptroller Mark Polancarz sounded the alarm bell that slowing 2006 sales tax collections may mean that 2007 sales tax projections - overly optimistic to begin with - are going to blow a big hole in the Erie County budget.

And when do taxpayers get their abatement? Not soon, seeing as how county lawmakers just extended one of New York's highest sales tax rates for another two years.

. ITEM - Of all the Eliot Spitzer stories that have tickled the electorate's collective fancy since his election, the best might have come the Monday following his gubernatorial coronation. The governor-elect was holding a series of Albany meetings to begin his transition from one part of the Rockefeller Plaza to another. On the agenda was a parlay with some of the Legislature's top brass, including Alan Hevesi apologist Sheldon Silver.

But Spitzer, maybe not so coincidentally, made sure the pecking order was a little different. While legislators waited their turn, Spitzer first met with a group of what the Albany Times Union labeled "representatives of good government groups." Included was Blair Horner, head of the nonpartisan think tank that famously pronounced New York's government the most dysfunctional in the country.

. ITEM - A smattering of Fox broadcast stations across the county are refusing to show one of the all-time most despicable scheduled broadcasts, showcasing one of the all-time most contemptible human beings, O.J. Simpson, and his deranged view of reality regarding the murders of two human beings. How much more meaningful would it be if the affiliate in the city where he made his fame and fortune would follow that lead? Plenty. But God forbid we subscribe to even a shred of standards and decency in pursuit of the almighty greenback.

WUTV is owned by Sinclair Broadcasting, no stranger, by the way, to making its own call about pre-empting programming with which it doesn't agree. Their ABC stations, you might recall, refused in 2004 to air Tod Koppel's "Nightline" program that recited the names of all the slain servicemen and women in the Iraqi war.

"It is Nightline's failure to present the entire story, however, to which Sinclair objects," wrote CEO David Smith in a letter to John McCain, who was disappointed in the broadcast outlet's decision to refuse to air that which they deemed rubbish.

One can only assume then that Sinclair considers this abominable effrontery a fair and balanced look at one of the most abhorrent news stories of our time. And we wonder why society's values and morals continue in an unabated death spiral.