Questions Remain Over What ‘Tax Free NY’ Proposal Would Mean to the Community

A new proposal by Gov. Andrew Cuomo has the potential to yield significant tax incentives to new and expanding businesses on and around SUNY campuses, but a state labor official on Friday acknowledged that the details of the plan, dubbed Tax Free NY, need more development by the state legislature.

Speaking to a room full of business owners, Stony Brook University faculty members, media and other community members, Labor Department Commissioner Peter Rivera said: “This is a bill that’s in progress. It has to be approved by the legislature. Lots of pieces haven’t been worked out yet.”

Cuomo’s proposal would allow businesses that either open on or in close proximity to a SUNY campus – or that expand job opportunities or relocate to New York from another state – to stop paying property taxes, income taxes, state sales taxes and corporate taxes for 10 years to aid in their growth.

New and expanding businesses on or within 200,000 square feet of a SUNY campus would qualify for the tax benefits. However, Rivera said that a linear distance equivalent to that area – measured, for instance, in miles – had not been set yet.
 
Guidelines for just how many new jobs businesses would need to create in order to qualify have not been established. Nor have any provisions for the protection of existing businesses been formally developed, he said. He did say that the program would be managed locally by Long Island’s Regional Economic Development Council, and said that it wouldn’t specifically be limited to high-tech companies.

“This is brand new,” he said. “If it has to be tweaked, we will tweak it.”

At least one business owner in the room said he looks forward to working with the Council to apply for such a program. Farjad Fazli, a Stony Brook student who graduated and started his own business, Immersive Ubiquity Inc., less than a month ago, said the program has the potential to benefit his company, which he said is developing applications for “human-computer interaction technologies.”

“We are looking for office space and so the Tax Free-NY plan, with its provision that frees up available space at SUNY campuses for startups, would be perfect for us,” he said in an email to Patch. “The proposal sounds like a win-win deal, allowing companies to operate tax-free while creating net new jobs and reducing unemployment.”

However, not everyone was in a position to readily welcome the idea.

Jonathan Kornreich, the vice president of the Three Village Central School District, asked whether the state would be ready to make accommodations for helping out the public taxing authorities such as school districts and fire districts, which rely on taxes to provide their services and which could potentially lose out bigtime should the Tax Free NY idea be enacted as proposed.

”Those are parts of the issues that still have to be worked out, and which have been raised already by localities,” Rivera said.

He evoked the concept of the mill as a community hub: in centuries past, a mill such as a lumber mill or a steel mill would become centers for commerce.

“That part of history is long gone. What’s going to replace the mills?” he said. “The colleges around New York State are the new economic engines.”

However, Kornreich told Rivera, “In the ‘new mill’ system, the effects of the state universities are felt statewide and nationwide, but the host communities are asked to shoulder the burden.”

Stony Brook University president Dr. Samuel L. Stanley Jr. suggested that people contact their local elected officials to present feedback and ideas related to the proposal.

“Your input could make a difference at this point in time, so I encourage everyone to keep track of this legislation,” Stanley said. “I personally find it very exciting for this university.”