Kathy Hochul is near her second month as New York governor, with watchful eyes scrutinizing her approach to major infrastructure projects.
That includes the Penn Station expansion — formally the Empire Station Complex — that predecessor Andrew Cuomo championed.
Meanwhile, the point agency for that project, the Empire State Development Corp., has come under fire.
According to an
ESD spends about $1.8 billion a year in taxpayer money for loans, grants, tax credits and other financial assistance to companies and projects.
“Empire State Development has an important role in helping New York’s economy grow and create jobs, especially now as we work to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the authority has not fully evaluated which programs work and which don’t,” DiNapoli said.
According to DiNapoli, ESD does not use the data it collects to assess program effectiveness. “The agency must do a better job of analyzing whether these programs are achieving their goals and share this information with the public,” he said.
ESD administers 57 programs with over 5,000 associated projects. State laws and regulations require ESD to perform certain program evaluations every two or four years.
According to DiNapoli, while ESD has moved many of its programs to central Microsoft Dynamics database, others remain tracked elsewhere, and only 37 of its 57 programs were fully tracked in the Dynamics system.
DiNapoli recommended ESD to conduct and document evaluations of economic assistance programs and to identify additional economic assistance programs that would benefit from a shift to Dynamics.
“ESD continues to conduct and document program assessments and evaluations such as published reports, which shape its work with the governor’s office and legislature as to the potential discontinuation, extension or modification of ESG programs,” agency chief compliance officer Felisa Hochheiser said in a response.
The agency has a leadership void that Hochul must fill. Former chairman Steven Cohen resigned, while former Metropolitan Transportation Authority chairman Patrick Foye, whom Cuomo named to head ESD shortly before he resigned in August, decided not to take the position of interim chairman and chief executive.
Hochul said she would fill the vacancy later this fall.
Speaking last week at a meeting of the New York Building Congress, Hochul said she would seek input from the city’s mayor on major projects.
