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Cuomo's tax-free plan has supporters, detractors

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State lawmakers could start voting as early as today on a bill that Governor Andrew Cuomo calls a "major victory for Upstate communities,"  the START-UP NY tax-free program.Cuomo now has Senate and Assembly leaders on board with his plan to turn SUNY campuses into tax-free zones to attract new businesses and jobs. START UP NY, Cuomo says, is the boldest economic development program for Upstate ever.

"This is on a scale that has never been attempted before. It has a simplicity to it that I believe is powerful," Cuomo says.

It's simple because participating companies will not pay any type of taxes for ten years and employees will not pay income taxes. To be eligible, businesses must be a new start-up relocating in New York from out of state or a new venture by an existing company that demonstrates the creation of new jobs.

START UP New York bans businesses that would compete with existing companies outside the tax-free area and will not be open to retail, wholesale businesses and restaurants.

Buffalo-Niagara Partnership President and CEO Dottie Gallagher-Cohen says the business community got behind the program after changes were made to ban participants that would compete with existing companies outside the tax-free area.

"This legislation is really designed to take some of the intellectual capital that we have here and turn it into business opportunity. The way it's written right now, it's not open for businesses in the retail sector or hospitality. It's really being engineered to drive using the intellectual capital of our academic life here, and I think that could be really good for us," Gallagher-Cohen says.

The AFL-CIO, New York State United Teachers and CSEA are opposed. Ron Deutsch, Executive Director of New Yorkers for Fiscal Fairness, says it's like Albany's other failed economic development programs, only "on steroids." Deutch says it has also become politicized.

"So what was supposed to be an Upstate economic development program has now, given the fact that Senator Skelos and Senator Klein had to agree to this, the governor basically had to buy them off, by allowing zones to be placed in New York City, in Long Island and in Westchester, when in fact the program was supposed to be for areas north of Westchester," Deutch says,

Cuomo's plan also has the support of leaders in the Assembly and the Senate. Lawmakers could vote on the program as early as Friday.