John Kaehny, the executive director of Reinvent Albany, joins JoDee Kenney to discuss New York's tax incentive program.

Kaehny says his group is focused on the issue of billions of dollars in tax dollars being wasted. 

"That's why we generally are opposed to tax breaks tax incentives and other forms of subsidy to businesses that we believe the evidence overwhelmingly shows do not work, and are not an effective way to spend tax dollars to make the state a better place to live and work," he said.

Kaehny says when it comes to large projects like the state’s Green CHIPS plan, the cost per job of those tax dollars and what they're buying is too expensive for taxpayers to ever break even on.

"If you're putting 70,000 or $100,000 in subsidies per year into a job, that job is never going to produce as much in tax dollars for societal benefit as the tax dollars spent, though, in the case of CHIPS," Kaehny said. "There is certainly a federal argument for subsidizing domestic manufacturers. But the question for us would be on the ships there New York state really have to put in so many billions, given that the federal government is putting in tens of billions of dollars in their general realm."

Kaehny says most of the businesses that come to the state do not do so because of state subsidies.

"How do we know that? Because their executives are regularly told by business groups," Kaehny said. "That's what they say. They can't because of workforce. But just in particular features of the New York market or proximity to the market that makes it an attractive place. And if you look, there is no correlation between tax credits, tax exemptions, etc., subsidy and job growth and economic growth. So you see areas of upstate, very, very large subsidy per person being given out by the developers or locally and by various state subsidies that are losing population and losing jobs. And you have downstate areas where you have major, major employers that are getting fewer, if any tax breaks. So they're just they're not correlated. 

You can watch the full interview with Kaehny in the video above. And be sure to tune in for a look inside the biggest issues impacting upstate New York, on In Focus — every Sunday on Spectrum News 1.