COMIDA’s shame (Sham) Tom Stephens, Metro Justice Member
Our friends at the County of Monroe Industrial Development Agency (COMIDA) met last month to consider hundreds of thousands of dollars of tax breaks for a hotel in Brighton.
The hotel would only be required to create one job.
Usually retail and service operations are not eligible for tax breaks. Last time I checked a hotel was in the service sector. But COMIDA deemed this hotel renovation project worthy of the “tourism exemption”.
The hotel is located across the street from the county jail.
The Brighton Town Board rejected the project and passed a resolution against it. At the public hearing speaker after speaker spoke out against the tax break (only the hotel owner spoke in favor of it).
The fiasco merited an intervention from Maggie Brooks who provided a procedural election year fig leaf for the project to move forward. Brooks sent a memo to COMIDA recommending the board allow Brighton to opt out of tax breaks for lodging facilities. COMIDA then decided that we must have a newly renovated hotel for the weary “tourist destination” travelers who will descend (en-mass) on Brighton because as we all know that spectacular view of the County lock-up on East Henrietta is only surpassed by the grandeur of MCC and 390 gridlock at rush hour.
Say it isn’t so Alice, but thanks to the forward thinking Maggie Brooks and Steve Minarik, Brighton Lodging Associates will add yet another hotel property to their portfolio in Monroe County, this flagship of tourism follows the other two COMIDA subsidized projects on Jefferson road along with the sizeable holding throughout western NY (Visions Hotels is the parent company of the Patel’s)
Oh, they forgot to mention that part on the application, as did they forget to mention the part about the two prior local labor violations of COMIDA regulations at the Jeff road project resulting in the loss not once but twice of their tax payer backed incentives.
Naturally the Patel’s explain that this was all just a big misunderstanding and that when they hired a contractor from Georgia they just assumed he would hire local craftspeople to work on their project. After all, Patel’s did sign an agreement with COMIDA to assure that this would happen.
I guess they must have hired the same guy from Georgia to fill out the most recent application for incentives as it is inaccurate, incomplete and in one case concerning job creation, they simply crossed out a number and penciled in another one. When these issues were raised by elected officials at the so called public hearing in Brighton on April 24 th, representatives from COMIDA (no Board members attend these meetings because they are “volunteers” and it would be a burden) explained that they had not reviewed the application and that it had not come before the Board.
Oops, forgot to mention the Board had already approved $100,000 in sales tax exemption (without public input).
“How could this happen?” you might ask. “Because they can” was the response.
All this culminates in Maggie chiming in at the 11 th hour offering some hocus pocus memo to the Board relieving Brighton of financial damage while still lifting tax payer dollars from our collective wallets. So life goes on in the kingdom of Monroe and all is as it should be, the powers that be are vigilantly hard at work “creating jobs.”
This is just the latest of COMIDA’s corporate welfare boondoggles and it proves that New York needs to overhaul the Industrial Development Agency system. COMIDA isn’t going to reform itself.
What you can do
Call your state representative and tell them to support the Initiative for Development Accountability’s 9 point plan for IDA reform.