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Should NY keep spending $50M a year on promotional TV ads?

Senate Republicans are calling for an end to the television ad spending, and even Gov. Andrew Cuomo is proposing to scale back the ads amid a budget crunch.
Courtesy: YouTube

By Joseph Spector, Gannett Albany

ALBANY -- New York spent $354 million on ads to promote tourism and economic development over the past six years.

But should the spending by taxpayers continue?

Senate Republicans are calling for an end to the television ad spending, and even Gov. Andrew Cuomo is proposing to scale back the ads amid a budget crunch.

In Cuomo's state budget plan last month, he proposed cutting the ad spending from $69.5 million in the current year to $44.5 million in the fiscal year that starts April 1.

“This is normal belt-tightening necessary to close a $4.4 billion gap," Morris Peters, a spokesman for the state Budget Division, said.

The spending has drawn criticism for years, particularly several years ago when the state spent $53 million on television ads for Start-Up NY, the struggling program that at the time had led to just $1.7 million in private investment.

Ads out?

Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan, R-Suffolk County, on Tuesday ripped the spending, saying New York should be cutting taxes rather than producing flashy ads.

He said the state should dump the ads altogether. Legislative leaders and Cuomo will negotiate a state budget in the coming weeks in order to have an on-time deal by March 31.

"If we have to send out ads saying we’re great, I think that creates a problem in and of itself," Flanagan said at a news conference in which the conference proposed business-tax cuts.

"If people feel that the state New York has their doors open for business and are welcoming people, I think that alone would create its own advertising."

Ads everywhere

The ads have been ubiquitous across New York and also have run around the country.

New York has been spending about $50 million a year on the ads as part of its "Open for Business" campaign, which promotes tourism and economic-development programs.

The spending ballooned to nearly $70 million last year, according to the state Budget Division, and Peters said the budget would still keep a significant amount of money to promote the state.

"The budget continues promotion of job creation and the revitalization of every region of the state by investing in key capital projects, emerging and high-impact industries, and regionally focused economic development strategies," he said.

The last spending on Start-Up NY, a program that provides tax-free zones for new businesses who locate on or near college campuses, was in 2014, state records obtained last month by the USA Today Network's Albany Bureau through a Freedom of Information request.

Since 2012, about $95 million has been spent on various tourism ad campaigns to promote seasonal attractions, the New York State Fair and the Oswego Harborfest.

About $134 million went to economic-development ads, 60 percent of which were run out of state, the records showed.

The rest went to the production of the ads.

Worth the money?

Tourism groups have praised the ads that promote attractions, particularly those upstate, saying tourism is the state's fourth largest industry and spending and visitors has soared to new records in part due to the ad campaign.

"It has helped tremendously," said Jill Delaney, president of the state Tourism Industry Association.

"Visitation is up. It is so widespread. You stop promoting that and you lose the big picture that New York has everything to offer from a tourism perspective."

Opponents have criticized the ads as a way for Cuomo to promote himself, even though he is not mentioned or shown in the ads.

The ads were an issue in the 2014 gubernatorial race and already crept into this year's race. Cuomo is seeking a third term in November and is a potential 2020 presidential candidate.

“New Yorkers have shelled out $354 million for television ads under this governor,” Sen. John DeFrancisco, R-Syracuse, one of the Republican candidates for governor, said in a statement Wednesday.

“They must ask themselves, ‘who other than Andrew Cuomo has benefitted from these ads?’ I can think of almost no one.”

The state Democratic Committee responded that DeFrancisco supported state budgets that included the ad spending.

"We guess 'he was for it before he was against it,'” the party said in a statement.

2 On Your Side contacted all of our local state senators' teams Thursday night to ask them about the ads and either didn't hear back or we were told the senators weren't available.

But our viewers definitely weren't shy about voicing their opinions. We posted a very unscientific Twitter poll Thursday afternoon, and with almost six-hundreds votes as of 9 p.m, 95-percent of those who responded do not think the state should be spending the money on these ads at all.

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