START UP NY -Who are those people?

We know that the New “StartUPNY” program is a farce with the main goal of helping Cuomo get re-elected.  The whole idea is to offer a 10 year tax free, including personal income tax, offer to people stupid enough to want to move to NY IF, and it is a big IF, Coumo likes you and you are the kind of business Cuomo wants and if you are willing to open where Cuomo wants you to open and follow the 50 pages of regulations of the program plus all of the other regulations that NY has.  Who pays for the program?  Why of course we do, the people and businesses that are already here.  The Cuomo administration will not tell us how well the program is working or how much they have spent on advertising but they do have some nice commercials with some people saying how great the program is.  Who are those people and what kind of business do they run.  (If you listen to the commercial closely, the people don’t say that they are moving to NY.)

Greg Heiland- CEO of Valutek.  New high tech company moving to NY because of STARTUPNY?  No, a warehouse that supplies clean room supplies like gloves, hats, wipes and mats.  How big is Valutek?  According to ZoomInfo, they have between $5 – $10 million in revenue and employ between 20 to 50 people.  When did Valutek start talking about moving? Valutek’s move was announced on November 17, 2011 by Sheldon Silver! http://assembly.state.ny.us/Press/20111117/  Does Valutek own that big building in the background?  No they don’t.  On the Maricopa Assessor’s web site they list SEMICONDUCTOR COMPONENTS IND LLC  as the owner, aka Motorola. (125-12-014, valued at $14+million.) Valutek owns the building to Greg’s right that you can only see a little corner of.  That building is owned by AEDIFICIUM LLC and if you look them up you will find that the real owner is Greg and what looks like his family. (1225-12-007B, valued at $3,813,700.)  Click  to see Greg’s YouTube video of: Valutek, The Story Behind The Story.  You will see him in his warehouse, not a modern, high tech, manufacturing building.

What about Tom Caulfield and Soraa?  Mr. Caulfield is an ex-IBMer. Soraa is a California based company that is a high-tech with revenues of $50 mil. – $100 mil. and employees between 250 – 500 people according to Zoom Info.  According to their November 2013 press release they are “open(ing) a new semiconductor fabrication plant in Buffalo” … to “employ hundreds of workers.”  Where will the company locate?  I would guess somewhere around the New York State Center of Excellence in Nanoelectronics and Nanotechnology where more than $20 billion has been spent, supposedly, with NY citizens picking up the tab for hundreds of millions.  An April 2014 Buffalo News article has them building at Buffalo High-Tech Manufacturing Innovation Hub at RiverBend along with other information. (Phase I investment: $1.5 billion in private sector funding and $225 million by New York State)

Anne Shybunko-Moore of GSE Dynamics.  Not a new company, founded in 1971, and already a company located in Hauppauge, New York.  I cannot find reliable data on the size of the company but I found numbers in the $5 – $10+ million range but Anne is very politically connected also . She was chosen to sit on Governor Cuomo’s Long Island Regional Economic Development Council and testify before Congress in 2011 about job creation, and she also hosted U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand’s Women’s Economic Empowerment Roundtable.  Again, not a big company, a new company or one that is moving to NY because of Start Up NY.

Sundra L. Ryce is the President of SLR Contracting & Service Company, Inc.  From the Company Profile: “SLR Contracting & Service Company, Inc. is a full service Commercial, General Construction Company. Established in 1996, by President and CEO Sundra L. Ryce, this Buffalo, New York based company is proud to be a certified, 100 percent Minority and Woman Owned Business Enterprise, (WMBE). SLR specializes in all aspects of Commercial General Construction, Construction Management and Design-Build services.”  Zoom Info list the company Revenue: $10 mil. – $25 mil.
Employees: 20 – 50.  Again, not a new company, not a big company, not even a high tech company and a company that is already in NY.  (I don’t know where the building is that she is standing in front of but it looks like the NanoFab Xtension that cost $365 million outside of Albany.)

WHAT ARE WE PAYING FOR?