Buffalo News - A new push to merge area IDAs
The push for a single industrial development agency in Erie County is heating up again.

It started last Monday, when the Amherst Town Board, in a surprise 4-3 vote, asked the state Legislature to back a proposed merger between the Erie County Industrial Development Agency and the Erie County Industrial Development Agency.

And it picked up additional steam on Thursday, when Amherst developer Dennis Penman was nominated to become the next chairman of the Erie County IDA and immediately backed the single IDA concept.

“It’s less redundant and there would be a better feeling of what’s going on, on a regional basis,” Penman said.

Penman’s vision would position the
Erie County IDA at the center of the region’s economic development efforts, spurring coordination and cooperation among local and county planners, pushing for redevelopment over sprawl while also taking a new look at the agency’s tax break policies.

“I’d like to see it become a clearinghouse for regional economic development planning,” says Penman, the executive vice president of M.J. Peterson Corp. “It should have more of a regional planning function to it.”

It’s about time.. How many IDA’s do we need anyway, how much have they done for the area? Hardly anything. The root of the problem is the unfriendly business atmosphere that Albany has created, the rules, restrictions, cost of doing business, utilities, insurance, workers comp ins, pensions blah, blah, blah.

Reign in Albany, fix it, repair it and reconstruct the state government and maybe we can start to turn this state around. In the mean time consolidate and eliminate.