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[Lenny Siegel <lennysiegel@gmail.com>]

Brownfield Blunder: New York should take more care in dispensing tax  
breaks

Editorial
Syracuse Post-Standard (NY)
August 10, 2011, 5:00 AM



The policy goals of the state’s 2003 Brownfield Cleanup Program were  
laudable. Who could argue with cleaning up polluted and abandoned  
properties so that they can be returned to productive use, with the  
added bonuses of discouraging sprawl and preserving suburban and  
rural “greenfields”? That’s just the kind of development the state  
should be encouraging, and tax credits included in the legislation  
were intended to compensate developers for taking on such difficult  
sites.

In execution, however, the Brownfield Cleanup Program went terribly  
wrong. Tax incentives turned out to be so generous that not only  
could developers write off the cost of cleaning up the property, they  
could claim a tax credit for 10 percent of the cost of the project  
they built on top of it.

To no one’s surprise - and the state’s horror - savvy developers took  
full advantage. Among the applicants were a luxury hotel in White  
Plains ($114 million), a Manhattan shopping complex ($58 million) and  
Syracuse’s own Destiny USA ($54 million).

...

For the entire editorial, see
http://blog.syracuse.com/opinion/2011/08/ 
brownfield_blunder_new_york_sh.html

--

Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
278-A Hope Street, Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650-961-8918 or 650-969-1545
Fax: 650-961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org

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