New York's pitch
Published July 29, 2016
Editorial by Greensboro News-Record, July 29, 2016.
We don’t like New York running TV ads in North Carolina trying to lure businesses. And we doubt its recruitment pitch will be very successful.
Yet the campaign by the Empire State Development Corp., aimed at North Carolina, Texas and Mississippi, only seeks to play on a touted strength: New York’s welcoming attitude. It uses headlines of recent news to paint a contrast to the target states. One, from The New York Times of March 23, says: “North Carolina bans local anti-discrimination policies,” a reference to House Bill 2. It’s true.
Former N.C. Supreme Court Justice Bob Orr filed complaints in New York charging that Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration used public funds to pay for ads that seek to influence North Carolina’s elections. That would be hard to prove from the ads themselves.
They tout New York’s history as a port of entry for immigrants, a safe place for slaves escaping from the South, and the birthplace of the women’s suffrage and gay rights movements. They proclaim its diversity today.
Those are positive attributes that might appeal to some businesses, especially in North Carolina, where scores of corporate leaders have expressed opposition to HB 2.
But corporate leaders can decide for themselves whether these New York qualities are attractive enough to relocate their businesses. There are many other factors to consider, including cost of living, workforce quality and availability, infrastructure, weather, higher education and more. For at least a century, business migration has tended to flow from North to South and East to West.
HB 2 may have a marginal effect, as we’ve seen already with decisions by PayPal, Deutsche Bank and the National Basketball Association. But, who knows, some other businesses might prefer to discriminate against gays and lesbians and to operate in a state where people are told to use the restrooms that correspond to the gender listed on their birth certificate. Maybe North Carolina can run ads in New York inviting those kinds of businesses.
When it comes to business recruitment, no tactics are considered unfair. Texas is complaining about New York’s ads now, but it ran a TV ad in New York in 2013 trying to entice firms there to move to Texas. The same year, Texas’ then-governor, Rick Perry, kicked up hard feelings in Maryland when he made a business recruiting trip to that state.
North Carolina may not be that aggressive, but it does offer substantial publicly funded incentives to land out-of-state companies willing to relocate here.
Outside New York City, New York has many declining smaller cities and rural areas where the population is shrinking. It’s trying, perhaps desperately, to turn that around — at the expense of North Carolina, Texas and Mississippi. It is using what its leaders, starting with Cuomo, think is a weakness in states with conservative social policies.
If North Carolina leaders think Cuomo is on to something, they might want to take a more moderate position on those policies, as our neighboring states have done. After all, New York is not targeting South Carolina, Georgia, Virginia or Tennessee.
July 29, 2016 at 9:29 am
Bruce Stanley says:
Let NY waste their taxpayers money. They tried tax incentives a couple of years ago and it failed miserably.
