Nice job on your most recent article. When I look at the dollars that NY lays out for state funded business subsidies ($110M for GEICO, $58M for Yahoo, and $750M for SolarCity) I wonder how many small business, housed in the numerous vacant buildings in downtown Buffalo, we could jumpstart with that amount of funding. In NY, Industrial Development Agencies work under the ‘but for’ clause (‘but for’ the help of the IDA this project would not go forward) but how true is this when we are dealing with larger companies? They have the ability to go wherever they want in the US (or, the world) and to build/expand anytime they want with or without the help of the local/state IDA’s. If we change the whole IDA structure so that it benefits only companies smaller than $1M, we might be able to clean up the whole IDA process and to provide funding to the companies that truly need it.

> David C. Hartzell, Jr., Supervisor, Town of Clarence

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