Hidden Subsidies Prop Up New York’s Fossil Fuel Industry
The state wants to phase out fossil fuels. Localities have given over a billion dollars in tax breaks to help keep them around.
This story was produced with support from the Fund for Investigative Journalism.
To analyze the state’s sprawling landscape of local energy subsidies, New York Focus compiled data submitted by industrial development agencies to the state comptroller’s office and the Authorities Budget Office from 2010 to 2022. According to the data, more than 9,000 projects received IDA subsidies during this time. Of these, we identified how many are energy projects, and then further broke them down by energy category. The tax breaks referred to in this story are the “net exemptions” IDAs reported to state officials, calculated as a project’s total tax exemptions minus the amount it paid in PILOTs.
“Isn’t this sort of ass-backwards?”
“State policy should not pit very small communities against really big companies.”
Correction: February 2, 2024 — A previous version of this story stated that Senator James Skoufis introduced legislation to stop IDAs from granting abatements of school taxes to projects. In fact, he co-sponsored the legislation.
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What are industrial development agencies?