Dr Andrew Rudnick defends Buffalo against Forbes

This is a great public relations speech from the Buffalo Niagara Partnership. It reminds me of many CEO annual speeches regarding the health and well being of their companies, meaning that it is heavily weighted on the side of optimism and good news. There is nothing wrong with it, because after all this is that the BNP is in business to do, hype and sell the area.

This is all good news, but it is definitely not enough. We still lack a cohesive plan to improve the area, to end the 30+ year backslide in our economy and growth. We need a definitive plan to attract new business, not just to expand the number of State funded jobs associated with UB and the government. We have three major bio-technology companies in Buffalo, compare that to regions like Baltimore County, MD (212), or the Raleigh-Durham area (202), or even Cleveland, Ohio (84), we have three major companies and a handful of smaller firms. It is akin to a teenager who discovers his/her first armpit hair, it is definitely a start, but still a long way off from maturity.

As far as reports on our housing market, it has been said here numerous times that our market is at a standstill while other markets that rose substantially in the 90s and early 2000s, collapse. We did not have the opportunity to take advantage of the same opportunities in wealth generation that others experienced during these years. I can tell you that it isn't all doom and gloom from people who are upside down in the mortgages, the majority of people made out well during this time, ask anyone who sold a property during the five years prior to the bubble bursting. While some people made six figure profits on their properties, our real estate value remained mostly stagnant, and declined in many areas of the city. That decline may have subsided, but we are not growing at a rate that would make this area more attractive. Investing in Buffalo is stable, it is like divesting yourself from the market and putting your money in bonds or CDs, low risk and low return.

We need to stop deluding ourselves that we are a growing city, or even a viable city at this point. The problem isn't the lack of business etiquette or networking opportunities for young people (or old people for that matter), it is the lack of opportunity. There is little opportunity in Buffalo, even for those people who have jobs. Most people who want to move up either wait an inordinate amount of time working in a company in Buffalo (when compared to other regions) or have to settle for a lateral move to one of a handful of employers in the area. The rest of the people in Buffalo are satisfied with the low risk and low reward world of public or union employment. The truly motivated, the entrepreneurs, the career minded, have little hope in Buffalo. If they have a decent mind and work ethic, then they will get out of the small pond to find something better somewhere else.

It comes down to making this area attractive to business, instead of attractive to uneducated, lazy, blue collar workers. We need to change how we view ourselves, we need to develop a plan for truly changing the way that the rest of the world sees us. We need to divorce ourselves of this lethargic, whiny, and overly entitled workforce and start to sell a new Buffalo, by making it attractive to do business here.

You want our economy to move, then get some businesses to move here. Reduce the taxes, the payroll deductions, the numerous layers of bureaucracy required just to get started. Start favoring the businessman and the business. There is far too much competition out there for us to compete against if we are spending our time kowtowing to our local unions and public employees. Businesses know that doing business in Buffalo can be a cancer to their organization. What is the BNP doing to address that?

It's a waste of Rudnick's time worrying about what that sniveling Reaganomic puppet Steve Forbes thinks. Buffalo may have a tortoise of an economy but it's passing the decaying corpses of all those hares that grabbed the spotlight for so many years. The ideal setting for Forbes' philosophy of low taxes and weak regulation is Nevada and that state is now host to a string of bank failures, cancelled developments and a sea of foreclosures. Buffalo is everthing this schmuck hates and guess what? We are doing better than his domains in New York City and Florida. While indeed there's much to improve here, none of it is for his sake.

Its not a waste of time responding. Buffalo and Buffalonians (regardless of where in the metro area they live) must have civic pride. Its that civic pride that makes people want to live, raise a family, invest here and devote their lives here.

However, I would say that Nanotechnology and Material Sciences are rising in importance and merely a decade behind that of the bio-sciences here. Plus Nanotechnology and Material Sciences are partnering UB and Buffalo State together.

However, I would say that the often ignored international telecommunications and networking hub we have here in Buffalo between the US & Canada is both starved and poised for future potential. Areas such as VOIP, DATA, Networking Hardware/Software, Servers, Systems, Data Centers, Transactions, Ecommerce, EBusiness, Websearchers, etc etc are all possibilities.

Thing is...Buffalo and Erie County are stuck spending to much money on state mandates, civil servants and inside business deals instead of investing in the cities future. There wasnt even a single proposal to take the revenue from the Seneca Creek Casino and put it into matching dollars for empire, brownfield, infrastructure or venture funds all of which could have created thousands of quality jobs.

Rimas, thank you for posting this; do you know, though, if this is the complete text, or if the complete text is available?

What decaying corpses? Do you really think that cities that got hit hardest are going to fold up and collapse? As the recession loses steam those cities will pick up and recover. Buffalo may not have the forclosure status of other area's, but it now beats most cities in unemployment rates at 9.1% and slowly growing. In a county [Erie] of just over a million, yesterdays news pegged food stamp usage at 113,000, or roughly 10% of the population. As to the forclosure rate, yes many cities do have homes in forclosure, lots of them, but these cities do not have a plan to bulldoze thousands of them down as Buffalo does. The homes in forclosure will eventually be sold and lived in again. None of it is Buffalo's fault per say, industry pulled out, taxes are some of the worst in the county, welfare and medicade chew up the states funds, utilities are so high it's stupid, and not one politician has seen to it to try and draw business or industry to the state. Sorry folks, but labatts USA world headquarters and the Evante building are not going to change Buffalo's growth. Even Patterson admitted that the NY state is still losing 150k a year in population. It seems OK for BRO local bloggers to put down other parts of the country, but never speak the truth about Buffalo's stagnent economy. Might I suggest instead of bashing other cities that have seen growth and will continue to do so down the road, focus your time and energy on making Buffalo better.

"uneducated, lazy, blue collar workers. . . We need to divorce ourselves of this lethargic, whiny, and overly entitled workforce"

1. These are the same people who have seen their productivity rise and their wages stagnate over the last few decades. How can these folks be called "lazy" and "overly entitled?"

2. It takes a special kind of person to look at a situation and decide that the problem isn't those with wealth or decision making power, but average people, instead. If only the average person in Buffalo made less money and had worse working conditions, life would be so much better!

3. We've had the sort of "divorce" you advocate many times before. Remember when the steel plants closed down? That was fantastic for Buffalo, right? Let's have a few more of those!

whynot and martin make good points in response to the article's spin and the bashing of other cities in some comments.

Eventually when the U.S. economy again starts good growth, what makes anyone realistically think WNY and Upstate NY won't again start lagging way behind other parts of the U.S. for private sector job growth?

If you say something like fresh water, or proximity to some percent of N American population, or being the "3rd cleanest city" according to Reader's Digest, I'll have to laugh.

Before anyone types a thin skinned knee jerk whining "whatever hates Buffalo", I'll point out nothing I wrote says everything is perfect elsewhere. Also, I didn't say there's no jobs or no businesses in Buffalo. The comparatively poor private sector local economy over the last 10 and 20 years doesn't automatically make Buffalo a bad place to live, and it won't if the next 10 or 20 years are similar. There's more to life than opportunities for many types of career/business growth. Still, to a lot of people that obviously does matter.

Btw, that's a very cool picture. Who took it?

Better check under the hood before talking up UB 2020:

http://uuphost.org/binghamton/node/17

UB 20/20: A Good Idea Made Horrible
Sun, 02/08/2009 - 22:54 — binghamton

Would you like to bring in 700-1000 world class Academics? Would you like to double the number of buildings on campus and bring hundreds of millions of dollars of construction to the local area? Would you like to enroll another ten thousand students?

These are all proposals put forward by SUNY-Buffalo’s president as part of his UB 20/20 Plan; a copy of the proposed legislation is available at http://assembly.ny.us/leg/?bn=A02020. These are all wonderful goals for the university center at Buffalo and could be translated into comparable goals for Binghamton or any number of other SUNY campuses. He has a vision and has gotten many in the Buffalo community to buy into this vision. When one looks a little closer, one is reminded of that line from “The Wizard of Oz,” “pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.” ‘Just pay attention to all that fire and smoke and what it suggests.’

To make this happen at UB, their president has asked for the unilateral authority to raise, and keep all, tuition for their students. The bill referenced above would allow him to increase undergraduate tuition by at least 32% over the next four years. Professional degree tuition could increase by at least 60%. Of course, UB would continue to receive the same state support as before. Even more interesting is the fact that if there are additional funds for SUNY, UB is at the front of the line and gets any increases first, before any other campus.

This bill also allows for the use of any and all state owned and operated facilities and land to be used for private purposes. He wants to build a hotel on state land and have the campus reap the benefits of that construction and operation. The state would get nothing and only the campus president makes the decision on these issues. All of these private enterprises would be exempt from local property taxes.

And, most interestingly, the president would be exempt from the provisions of the Public Officers Law and Ethics Law. He can do what he wishes and then have the state represent him in court if he is sued.

This sounds a lot like what happened during the last eight to ten years in the federal government. Let’s get rid of the rules on oversight; let’s free individuals to make their own decisions; and let’s turn a blind eye to potential legal improprieties. It worked for awhile but then it came back and bit us all very hard. There is a reason for rules and oversight. They might slow us down a little, but they do ensure we are protected and safe from rapacious individuals who are more interested in personal power than they are in anybody or anything else.

UNITED UNIVERSITY PROFESSIONS
2009 Winter Delegate Assembly Highlights and Resolutions

http://www.uupinfo.org/das/09_w_da.html

In the Saturday morning Plenary Session, Delegates heard the reports of Vice President for Academics Fred Floss, Secretary Eileen Landy, Treasurer Rowena Blackman-Stroud and Membership Development Officer Ed Quinn. Vice President for Professionals John Marino was ill; President Smith reported on his behalf. Delegates took the following actions:

* Adopted a Resolution Opposing A/S 20/20 submitted by the Western New York Chapters.

WHEREAS, the State University of New York was established as a system of campuses designed to provide the citizens of New York with affordable access to the full range of quality public higher education opportunities; and

WHEREAS, UUP is the collective bargaining agent representing the academic and professional faculty of the State University of New York; and

WHEREAS, the management at the University at Buffalo is promoting legislation (UB 2020) introduced by Assemblyman Schimminger and Senator Stachowski that includes provisions for differential tuition and that will negate existing labor agreements and lead to the privatization of the University at Buffalo; and

WHEREAS, A/S UB 2020 will create a blueprint for other SUNY campuses to follow and could lead to the dismantling of SUNY as a system of public higher education; therefore, be it

RESOLVED, that the UUP Winter Delegate Assembly go on record as vehemently opposing A/S 2020; and be it further,

RESOLVED, that the Delegate Assembly directs the President of UUP to take all possible action to defeat this legislation; and be it further

RESOLVED, that UUP ask its affiliates, including NYSUT and all labor unions in New York and the New York State AFL-CIO to join in a campaign to defeat this legislation and all similar proposals that may surface.

The University At Buffalo's A-S/2020 Bill Runs Into Trouble With Organized Labor/Union Officials Say Present Draft Is Anti-Labor
Written by Tom Campbell
Monday, 23 February 2009

http://wnylabortoday.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=338:the-university-at-buffalos-a-s2020-bill-runs-into-trouble-with-organized-laborunion-officials-say-present-draft-is-anti-labor&catid=30:latest-labor-news&Itemid=3

(WESTERN NEW YORK) – It appears New York State Assembly and Senate bill A.2020/S.2020 – also known as the University at Buffalo 2020 Flexibility and Economic Growth Act – has been derailed due to action taken by several representatives of Organized Labor, who described the proposed legislation as containing no protections for a number of Labor Standards, including prevailing wage rates on construction, and allowing UB the opportunity to create a number of non-represented positions, WNYLaborToday.com has learned.

The United University Professions (UUP) – which is part of the 600,000-member New York United Teachers (NYSUT) Union, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and the Buffalo AFL-CIO Central Labor Council are at least three Labor Organizations that had either lobbied or met with UB officials to make known their displeasure with the bills that were sponsored by State Senator William Stachowski and State Assemblyman Robin Schimminger.

A resolution by the UUP, including its Western New York chapters and Winter Delegate Assembly, have gone on record as “vehemently opposing” A-S/2020, and directed UUP leadership to reach out to all Labor Unions in the state to “defeat this legislation and all similar proposals that may surface.” UUP said the legislation included “provisions for differential tuition that will negate existing Labor agreements and lead to the privatization of UB.”

A-S/2020 reads in part: amend the education law, the public authorities law and the general municipal law, in relation to authorizing tuition increases for the State University of New York at Buffalo (Part A); to amend the education law, in relation to the use of State University of New York at Buffalo property (Part B); to amend the education law, the state finance law and the tax law, in relation to the ability of the state university trustees to purchase items and enter into contracts and agreements (Part C); to amend the education law and the state finance law, in relation to the distribution of money received from various sources related to the State University of New York at Buffalo (Part D); and to amend the education law, in relation to providing that certain lease of the State University of New York at Buffalo need not be submitted to the attorney general for his or her approval (Part E).

“Our problems are not with the strategic vision to advance UB 2020. We have no problem with its general principles and goals to expand their facilities and improve the local economy. Instead, there are real issues with the bill that need to be fixed because it looks and smells very anti-worker. That’s an important distinction to make,” Ray Dannenhoffer, president of UUP’s Health Services Chapter and Associate Dean for Support Service/Pathology and Anatomical Sciences at the UB School of Medicine, told WNYLaborToday.com.

Richard Stempniak, UUP Chapter President at Buffalo State College, who is also involved, added: “As we continued to look at the bill, it got worse and worse. We support the concept of 20/20, but not the bill in its present state. This bill is anti-Wick’s and contains no Project Labor Agreement. There’s no protection for women and minority hiring goals. I couldn’t believe that Schimminger and Stachowski chose to put their names on it.”

Asked whether he was surprised by what he read in A-S/2020, Buffalo AFL-CIO President Mike Hoffert, answered, “Yes,’ and added the present version of the bill needs to be redrafted.

“Once you take a good look at it you see no Labor protections. I know the UUP and the IBEW are against it. Yes, we need jobs, but going the way of the cheapest isn’t necessarily the best way to go. The investment in construction at UB is nothing to sneeze at, but our contention is that local Labor gets the work and the wages stay here locally,” Hoffert said.

Buffalo AFL-CIO President Hoffert said he did speak to UB President John Simpson, who spoke at a recent get-together of Union representatives and delegates during a Buffalo CLC meeting, about the problems. The answer he received, Hoffert said, was something along the lines of, “I’m a biologist who didn’t know anything about the specifics of the legislation.”

UUP’s Dannenhoffer said he really didn’t know who was responsible for putting the gut-work of the A-S/2020 bill together. However, under its proposed state, Dannenhoffer said UB would be allowed to privatize itself and that UB could “spend any monies it receives any way it wants, hire anyone they want in a non-Union position.” There should be greater scrutiny when it comes to the use of taxpayer dollars on the UB Campus, said Dannenhoffer, who added: “In this day and age, oversight on giving out taxpayer money is not necessarily a bad thing.”

In September, Organized Labor was prominently featured in UB President Simpson’s 2008 Community Address to the Western New York Region, which trumpeted the benefits of the university’s ambitious plan that calls for a $2.5 billion capital improvement project over the course of the next 10 years – an effort that would create tens of thousands of new jobs.

At that time, UB President John Simpson touted the need for a committed and long-term investment, as well as a call for deregulation and relief from New York. Simpson also spoke of the need for state elected leaders in Albany to either “get behind UB’s 20/20 plan or get out of the way.” “This is our best hope for our region’s future. We need support. Labor is behind it and the entire community has backed UB 20/20 and I thank you for that. Join us in asking Albany to make the changes and reforms and make them now!” he said.

As it continues to lay the groundwork to make UB 20/20 reality, the University of Buffalo had reached out to Organized Labor in order to partner with the well-known and respected educational institution’s effort to lobby state elected officials for funding assistance. Also meeting with UB officials were a number of local Labor Unions, including the Buffalo Building & Construction Trades Council, the CSEA, the Teamsters, the United Auto Workers and the United Food & Commercial Workers, to name but a few.

“We’ve never really seen anything like this (UB reaching out to partner with area labor organizations) happen before on this scale,” Buffalo AFL-CIO President Hoffert told WNYLaborToday.com at the time. “UB wants labor to join with the university in lobbying the state for funding that would allow it to expand. Its vision of the future has UB expanding from twenty-eight-thousand students to thirty-eight thousand. The potential economic benefits include a range of things, from new student housing to as much as one-thousand new and good-paying faculty member jobs and six hundred service employee jobs. The ancillary spin-offs are everything from construction of new student housing to numerous local retail opportunities. This effort would create tremendous critical mass and organized labor looks forward to partnering with UB in helping make this happen.”

So where does the A-S/2020 situation stand now?

UUP’s Stempniak said it was his understanding UB President Simpson was planning to reach out to NYSUT and its legislative staff to get in-put in order to rewrite the bill, but as of late last week, NYSUT had not heard from UB.

“The door is open. It’s their move,” Stempniak said.

Added UUP’s Dannenhoffer: “We’re looking for a reasonable solution.”

Said Buffalo AFL-CIO President Hoffert: “(Organized Labor) will help UB draft a new proposal that contains protections for prevailing wages and such. These types of things are very important. If not, there will be no benefit for Western New York workers in such a bill.”

Buffalo is dying. The cheerleaders on this board and people like Rudnick are overly emotion and self-serving, and therebi irrational. Looking at the issues from a rational perspective, people want jobs, job growth, job opportunities and prosperity. They want quality education for this kids. They want homes and they want their investment in those homes to be protected.

Buffalo lacks for jobs. Education might be one of the few things it has going for it (if you get to the suburbs of course) and homes are a joke. Equity rises slow in good areas, decreases in bad areas (govt doesn't protect your investment through code enforcement, lad use policy, etc.) and taxes ALWAYS rise. Everyone here equates affordable homes with a good thing. It's necessarily. It means you have a lessening demand for housing and more housing than needed, simple supply and demand. Also, property taxes here are among the highest in the country, lessen the value and reducing equity growth. Housing here is a lost invetsment, plain and simple. Sure, housing is afforable but you lose money on it. In Florida or North Carolina, taxes on a $200,000 house are half a $100,000 here! And the homes increase in value quicker. So you might pay more in mortgage costs but the important thing you're equity grows faster, outpacing the taxes you're paying yearly. Those that own a home know that you've paid more in the last 10 years in property taxes than you've gained in equity (barring major renovations). That makes housing affordable but makes ownership stupid and not an investment but a loss.

Government here is too big, too inefficient and too fragmented to keep costs down. Other states that are stealing our young, educated professionals have county governments and very inexpensive taxes, which in turn is a good business climate which in turn fuels job growth and opportunity.

Sure, this place has it's nice advantages. But people aren't moving here beacuse they like the lake, or the ABK, or they like to ski or go to the theatre. Those are extras, those aren't the foundations upon which a great place to love and work is based upon. The supplement the jobs, housing and education.

I'm so sick of the rose colored glasses approach from people.
A lot of people have a hard time admitting this region and this state is among the most regressive, over-taxed, corrupt places in America. Everyone spends an inordinate amount of time praising what we have, like it doesn't exist anywhere else. That might be the case for some things, but you know what doesn't exist in other places that exists here... high taxes, stagnant housing equity growth, rampant population decline, deteriorating housing and infrastructure, ineffective and self-serving govt....

But hey, the architecture is nice.

Cartels which limit the labor pool are also anti-labor. By only looking out for you members, you screw community at-large that would benefit from the increases proposed in UB2020. Without creating jobs that actually produce wealth, your jobs will not be protected. What jobs will remain in construction when there's no private sector, who will the teachers teach when those who pay taxes leave town for other jobs. Enjoy the short term gains, you're no different than the investor who looked for 30% returns and then got screwed in the stock market.

Sam Magavern and some of his students at the UB Law School have a well written piece on how Rudnick and the IDA have failed Buffalo.

Missing the Target: How Economic Development Programs Have Failed to Revive Buffalo's Most Challenged Neighborhoods.

http://ppg-buffalo.wikispaces.com/file/view/Missing+the+Target.pdf

How will stalling UB2020 fix the woes of local economic development programs and revive the neighborhoods? Sadly, those problems outlined in the report are the same challenges that have not and may be unable to be addressed in every city in the country, not just Buffalo. It's a vicious cycle that is partially economic, partially social and its been nearly the same since "how the other half lives" was written over 100 years ago.

Apparently some of UB's own faculty don't think too highly of UB2020 either.

Legislation gives administration too much discretion - Buffalo News 2/3/09

http://www.buffalonews.com/opinion/anothervoice/story/567952.html

The Buffalo News supports the University at Buffalo’s 2020 legislation, which allows the university freedom to sell/lease land, raise tuition and borrow money as it chooses. As a professor dedicated to his students and his field — theater — I’d like to give an insider’s view. The legislation is a Trojan horse.

This bill gives carte blanche to any university president to raise and spend funds for any purpose. (That they should be “educational purposes” is meaningless; anything a university does can be termed “educational.”) Meanwhile, the university continues receiving state funding. This is not a deal for the state, taxpayers, students or their families. It’s giving your house keys to the smiling stranger.

The Simpson administration has an internal reputation for insularity, arrogance, overriding faculty/student recommendations for faculty promotion and suspicion of discrimination. It is infatuated with trappings of status and money. It compels faculty to win government grants and “notable credits” emphasizing rankings and prestige. All are first importance for hiring and promotion. Teaching and commitment to students are far second or non-existent.

This prioritization is a university directive. My field requires periods of physical absence from my students. I engage in some of these activities, but decline many others. My students’ education would suffer. I would not be promoted with this attitude.

As to the plan to vastly increase student population, why? Will this huge undergraduate population — paying higher and higher tuitions — fund “star graduate faculty” in publicly financed research centers, while undergraduates are taught by teaching assistants in classes of 200 or more? Many already are.

A “research university” is an educational center, not a private research corporation. The best universities generate knowledge with and through their educational goals, not in spite of them. I see no recognition of this with the present administration.

Rather, the administration offers a perfect example of what was described in a recent New York Times article as a culture of “professional narcissism.” The story detailed two universities’ bidding war for a notable professor. The winning university offered the ultimate “perk” –a guarantee the professor would not have to teach, ever. He accepted.

This is a sick attitude in any school, one that guides its expenditures. In a public university, created to affordably provide cutting-edge education to state citizens, relegating the education of masses of students to secondary areas borders on the illegal. Yet, the state gives up substantial control in the 2020 legislation to any misguided administration to do as it wishes.

Beware an institution that cannot distinguish between reputation and talent. Best keep your keys in your pocket."

I want the school to have the ability to grow and become a great institution, a large public university that can compete with those of other states and gain a legacy and notarity. The whole world is not based around academia, in fact, many loath the world as unrealistic. Grow the name of the school and those who go, along with their SAT scores and credentials. Eventually those students succeed and contribute to the school, giving money to help build programs that may be underperforming or marginal. Have strong graduate programs and keep the undergrads happy and paying. The deal students get relative to private universities in terms of tuition is not even close.

Simpson actually puts together a plan for the university that works to help build the city and its put down, sometimes you just can't win.

No excellence for Rudnick and UB at their Center of Excellence either.

The Citizens Budget Commission (a nonpartisan, nonprofit civic organization devoted to influencing constructive change in the finances and services of New York City and New York State government.) has been recommending the shutdown of most of Pataki's Centers for Excellence (CoE) program (including the CoE Bioinformatics in Buffalo) since at least 2007.

The CBS has found that after a NYS expenditure of at least $586 million, only the Albany CoE has been even relatively successful at delivering the promised results (ie. the leverage new private sector and other contributions of more than $1 billion)

Some of the Citizens Budget Commission's findings:

* Scale back the Centers of Excellence (CoE) program. The State has made funding commitments for the CoE program through 2006 of $586 million. Of that, $342 million is slated to go to the somewhat successful center at UAlbany while the remainder will be spread around the other less successful centers. The State could scale back the size of the program to fund only UAlbany and shut down the others for a savings of $244 million.

* The State should also address the lack of impact of the Centers of Excellence (CoE) program. Only funding for the relatively successful University of Albany Center should be continued. In general, greater disclosure is needed for all of the State’s economic development programs to enable more meaningful oversight of these expenditures.

* Scale back the Centers of Excellence program. The Centers of Excellence (CoE) program was established in 2001 with the goal of leveraging the intellectual capacity of the State universities for economic development. High tech centers situated around the State were to draw in private and public investment and create jobs. The Pataki Administration established the first five: Nanoelectronics and Nanotechnology (Albany); Bioinformatics and Life Sciences (Buffalo); Photonics and Optoelectronic (Rochester); Wireless and Information Technology (Stony Brook); and Environmental and Energy Systems (Syracuse). Two others were added by Legislative action in 2006: Small Scale and Systems Integration at Binghamton and Bioscience in New York City. From 1997 to 2005 these Centers received $529 million. Almost all of these funds were allocated through memorandums of understanding shielded from public review.

* Before 2007 the CoEs had no job creation requirements. The Empire State Development Corporation has recently taken over their management and has instituted procedures for estimating job creation, but as of yet there is no way to ascertain their impact on job creation. A recent assessment by AT Kearney for the Empire State Development Corporation concluded that only one CoE, The Center for Excellence in Nanoelectronics and Nanoscience at UAlbany, had been effective in drawing significant private capital. The center in Albany has attracted $1.2 billion in private investment; the other six centers have attracted a combined $135 million. It is not clear if the conditions that made for Albany’s success can be replicated at the other locations.

* The State made funding commitments for the CoE program through fiscal year 2005-06 of $586 million. Of the total, $342 million goes to the center at UAlbany and the remainder will be spread among the other centers. The State could scale back the size of the program to fund only the successful UAlbany center for a savings of $244 million.

http://www.cbcny.org/

Websnark = Answerlady.... same axe to grind against UB, same regurgitation of posts from her blog.

Does look like that bill is stalled in committee.

http://www.assembly.state.ny.us/leg/?bn=A02020

http://public.leginfo.state.ny.us/menuf.cgi

STATUS:
S2020 STACHOWSKI Same as A 2020 Schimminger
Education Law
TITLE....Relates to tuition increases, leasing, contracting, and the overall daily operation at the State University of New York at Buffalo

02/11/09 REFERRED TO HIGHER EDUCATION

^^^ Ugh.

Good for Dr. Rudnick. I have said it before and I will say it again. Forbes is junk. Once a reputable magazine now holds no credibility when one realizes articles they write with this kind of impact are simply based on years past statistics. No real research, no real heart in what is being written.

Presenting a speech in Buffalo to Buffalonians about the wonderful assets in the City of Buffalo will help Buffalo attract outside investment?

Does that mean that cranking REO Speedwagon while mouthing the words into a hairbrush microphone to an audience of your cats makes you an 80's rockstar and not a 'decaying corpse' has been?