MEDICAL SUPPLIES | Maloney, Axne Call for Lifting Tariffs

Tariffs have slowed imports of medical supplies from China.
Source: Chad Bown, PIIE (Peterson Institute), March 17, 2020.

April 2, 2020 — Backed by 18 of their colleagues in the House, Reps. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY12) and Cindy Axne (D-IA3) have called for the immediate lifting of tariffs on life-saving medical supplies and PPE during the coronavirus pandemic.

In their letter to U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and U.S. Ambassador to China Terry E. Branstad, the Representatives write, “While we continue to support American manufacturers and innovation, there simply are not enough medical supplies and PPE domestically to alleviate the burden on our healthcare system.

“The tariffs add substantially to costs and delays in obtaining life-saving equipment and supplies to our healthcare providers who are in a life-and-death struggle. We can – and must – do more to enable those on the front lines to do their jobs effectively and without fear that they might become infected or spread the virus themselves.”

Joining Congresswomen Maloney and Axne on this letter are Representatives Grace F. Napolitano (D-CA), Nydia M. Velázquez (D-NY), Harley Rouda (D-CA), Lizzie Fletcher (D-TX), Danny Davis (D-IL), Vicente Gonzalez (D-TX), Donna E. Shalala (D-FL), Steve Cohen (D-TN), Sharice L. Davids (D-KS), James P. McGovern (D-MA), Ed Case (D-HI), David Scott (D-GA), Raúl M. Grijalva (D-AZ), Charlie Crist (D-FL), Matthew Cartwright (D-PA), Anna Eshoo (D-CA), Bill Foster (D-IL), Abigail Spanberger (D-VA), and Darren Soto (D-FL).

The full text of the letter follows:

Dear Ambassador Lighthizer and Ambassador Branstad:

We write to request that you immediately suspend all tariffs placed on all imports of medical supplies and equipment, including personal protective equipment under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 for the duration of the rapidly developing Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

The U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) recognized that tariffs on medical supplies and equipment were inappropriate when it announced on March 20 it would open a 3-month comment period for members of the public, businesses, and government agencies “to submit comments if they believe further modifications to the (Section) 301 tariffs may be necessary.”

However, we’re asking for an immediate suspension of these tariffs because we cannot afford to wait any longer. On the day the comment period was announced, there were 15,490 total cases and 201 total deaths in the United States from the coronavirus. Today, there are 209,071 total cases and 4,633 total deaths. In New York, the epicenter of the outbreak in the U.S., hospitals and healthcare systems are nearing their breaking point as the number of new cases continues to exponentially rise.

As the outbreak continues, hospitals, doctors, health care providers, and emergency management coordinators in our districts and across the nation have been sounding the alarm that their systems are being overwhelmed. Our entire healthcare infrastructure is experiencing shortages of medical supplies – like ventilators, gloves, hand sanitizer, and other essentials – and personal protective equipment (PPE) that are critical to fighting the outbreak.

While we continue to support American manufacturers and innovation, there simply are not enough medical supplies and PPE domestically to alleviate the burden on our healthcare system. The tariffs add substantially to costs and delays in obtaining life-saving equipment and supplies to our healthcare providers who are in a life-and-death struggle. We can – and must – do more to enable those on the front lines to do their jobs effectively and without fear that they might become infected or spread the virus themselves. Accordingly, we urge all of you to immediately take steps to suspend all tariffs placed on medical supplies and equipment for the duration of this public health crisis."

Nonprofit groups that have protested the continued tariffs on medical supplies include the Peterson Institute, which wrote on March 13, 2020: "President Donald Trump's trade war with China is threatening to cripple the US fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. The administration's tariffs on Chinese medical products have cut imports of these products from China and may be contributing to shortages and higher costs of vital equipment at a time of nationwide crisis. The administration has announced temporary reductions in some tariffs on Chinese medical products, but only a handful were affected. The US epidemic demands that the administration comprehensively and permanently reverse these policies of self-harm."

PANDEMIC | How Nonprofits Are Helped by the CARES Act

In the Trenches against
the Coronavirus.

March 28, 2020–Two weeks ago the White House and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) seemed to be on the front line of the U.S. defense against the novel coronavirus, aka COVID-9.

But we in New York State are more focused at this point on the daily briefings of Governor Andrew Cuomo. What matters to us is our theater of the war and the specifics of the progress of the war. The Governor is the one matching hospital beds and PPE and ventilators and staff to where they are most needed to slow down the spread of the disease.

The trenches in this war are the hospitals, their emergency rooms (ERs) and intensive care units (ICUs). Many of these hospitals are nonprofit organizations, as are employers of home health care and visiting nurses groups, which are nonprofits. Often they get left out of laws, as they were in the case of the Tax Act of 2017.  Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY12) wrote a bill last year to rectify the situation; it is H.R. 3323, the Nonprofit Relief Act, now with the House Ways and Means Committee.

So I was curious how the nonprofits fared with the new $2 trillion relief. The National Council of Nonprofits has prepared an excellent summary of the law as it applies to all nonprofits (i.e., charitable foundations with 501-c-3 status under IRS regulations), and I can do no better than to show their analysis below. I do so with their permission:

Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act 

CARES Act (Pub. L. 116-132)

On Friday, March 27, the House unanimously passed and the President signed into law the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, a $2 trillion economic stimulus law intended to provide immediate relief for individuals, nonprofits, businesses, and state and local governments. The CARES Act is the third law enacted in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

What’s in the Act for Nonprofits

The CARES Act provides significant funding for governments, businesses, hospitals, schools, and social support programs. Below are key provisions of sector-wide interest to charitable nonprofit organizations.

Paycheck Protection Program Loans (emergency SBA 7(a) loans): Creates an emergency loan program providing loans of up to $10 million for eligible nonprofits and small businesses, permitting them to cover costs of payroll, operations, and debt service, and provides that the loans will be forgiven in whole or in part under certain circumstances. Section 1102.

• General Eligibility: Available to entities that existed on February 15, 2020 and had paid employees or paid independent contractors.
• Nonprofit Eligibility: Available for charitable nonprofits with 500 or fewer employees (counting each individual – full time or part time and not FTEs). The law does not disqualify nonprofits that are eligible for payments under Title XIX of the Social Security Act (Medicaid), but does require that employees of affiliated nonprofits may be counted toward the 500 employee cap, depending on the degree of control of the parent organization.
• No Personal Guarantee: No personal guarantee or collateral will be required in securing a loan.
• Loan Amount: The lesser of $10 million or 2.5 times the average total monthly payroll (including benefits) costs from the one-year period prior to the date of application.
• Loan Use: Loan funds can be used to make payroll and associated costs, including health and retirement benefits, facilities costs, and debt service.
• Loan Forgiveness: Employers that maintain employment for the eight weeks after the origination of the loan, or rehire employees by June 30, would be eligible to have their loans forgiven, essentially turning the loan into a grant. Section 1106.

Economic Injury Disaster Loans (EIDL): Creates emergency grants for eligible nonprofits and other applicants with 500 or fewer employees enabling them to receive checks for $10,000 within three days. Section 1110. (The National Council of Nonprofits has posted a side-by-side comparison of the loan programs.)

Self-Funded Nonprofits and Unemployment: Only reimburses self-funded nonprofits for half of the costs of benefits provided to their laid-off employees. This is explained in a recent blog article. Section 2103.

Charitable Giving Incentive: 

- Creates a new above-the-line deduction (universal or non-itemizer deduction that applies to all taxpayers) for total charitable contributions of up to $300. The incentive applies to cash contributions made in 2020 and can be claimed on tax forms next year. Section 2204. 

- The law also lifts the existing cap on annual contributions for those who itemize, raising it from 60 percent of adjusted gross income to 100 percent. For corporations, the law raises the annual limit from 10 percent to 25 percent. Food donations from corporations would be available to 25 percent, up from the current 15 percent cap. Section 2205.

                                         

Employee Retention Payroll Tax Credit: Creates a refundable payroll tax credit of up to $5,000 for each employee on the payroll when certain conditions are met. The entity had to be an ongoing concern at the beginning of 2020, experienced a whole or partial shutdown, and had seen a drop in revenue of at least 50 percent in the first quarter compared to the first quarter of 2019. The availability of the credit would continue each quarter until the organization’s revenue exceeds 80 percent of the same quarter in 2019. For tax-exempt organizations, the entity’s whole operations must be taken into account when determining eligibility. Notably, employers receiving Paycheck Protection Program loans would not be eligible for these credits. Section 2301.

Delayed Payment of Payroll Taxes: Allows employers to delay payment of the employer portion payroll taxes in 2020; payable in equal halves at the end of 2021 and 2022. Section 2301.

Economic Stabilization Fund: Creates a loan and loan guarantee program for industries like airlines to keep them solvent through the crisis. It sets aside $454 billion for “eligible business” which is defined as “a United States business that has not otherwise received economic relief in the form of loans or loan guarantees provided under” the legislation. It is expected, but unclear, whether charitable nonprofits qualify under that definition for stabilization loans. Mid-sized nonprofits and businesses that have between 500 and 10,000 employees are expressly eligible for loans under this provision. Although there is no loan forgiveness provision in this section, the mid-size business loans would be charged an interest rate of no higher than two percent and would not accrue interest or require repayments for the first six months. Nonprofits accepting the mid-size business loans must retain at least 90 percent of their staff at full compensation and benefits until September 30.  Section 4003.

Other Significant Provisions of the CARES Act

Direct Payments to adults of $1,200 or less and $500 per child ($3,400 for a family of four) to be sent out in weeks. The amount of the payments phases out based on earnings of between $75,000 and $99,000 ($150,000 / $198,000 for couples). Section 2201.

Expanded Unemployment Insurance: Includes coverage for workers who are furloughed, gig workers, and freelancers. Increases payments by $600 per week for four months on top of what state unemployment programs pay. Section 2104.

Amendments to the New Paid Leave Mandates: Lowers the amounts that employers must pay for paid sick and family leave under the Families First Coronavirus Response Act* (enacted March 19) to the amounts covered by the refundable payroll tax credit – i.e., $511 per day for employee sick leave or $200 per day for family leave. Sections 3601 and 3602.

Significant Spending: The law also calls for large infusions of cash to the following sectors:

• $150 billion for a state, tribal, and local Coronavirus Relief fund
• $130 billion for hospitals
• $30 billion for education
• $25 billion for transit systems

Legislative Resources

• Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, H.R. 748 legislative text
• A section-by-section for unemployment insurance and tax policy
• A section-by-section for health policy
• A section-by-section for appropriations
• A section-by-section for banking policy

_________________

* See: Analysis of the Families First Coronavirus Response Act. Also, browse the National Council of Nonprofits collection of resources for nonprofits dealing with the impact of COVID-19.

R.I.P. | Mae Doris Corrigan (1928-2015)

Doris Corrigan (lower left) with then-Speaker Quinn (R),
 turning out for Hillary Clinton. Assemblyman Dick
Gottfried and Tom Duane, upper left, were at Doris'
memorial service last weekend.

There are people in New York City who make things work and are insufficiently recognized.

You sometimes don't find out the full extent of their contributions after they die and a memorial service is held for them.

Jane Wood in Chelsea was one of those people, saving so many from evictions from their homes.

Little-known fact: Doris attended
Hogwart's, which explains a LOT.
Here she is graduating from the
junior school at Hogwart's.

Another was Mae Doris Corrigan, who was at the forefront of every Chelsea humanitarian and anti-discrimination cause for one-third of a century.

A memorial for Doris Corrigan was held last weekend from 2 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. at the Hudson Guild in Chelsea. It was opened by Ken Jockers of Hudson Guild.

Laura Morrison. Photo
JTM.

Doris was 87 when she died July 23, 2015 in the Amsterdam Nursing Home, where she had been a patient for several months. Doris was a major presence in Chelsea, as was indicated by the large turnout in her memory.

State Sen. Brad
Hoylman. Photo JTM.

Doris was widely known in New York City for her advocacy of progressive neighborhood causes within the Reform Democratic Party organization over the past 40 years. She was at the founding of the Chelsea Waterside Park Association. She was president of the Chelsea Reform Democratic Club, and fought to promote affordable housing and to defeat the plan for a football stadium on the West Side.

Her health began to deteriorate in 2011 when she was hospitalized after a fall, said Laura Morrison, a community liaison officer for state Senator Brad Hoylman and a long-time friend of Doris’s.

Five generations of Chelsea district leaders turn out to honor Doris Corrigan.
L to R: Steven Skyles-Mulligan, Sylvia Di Pietro, Tom Schuler, Tim Gay,
Paul Groncki, Kathy Kinsella, former State Senator Tom Duane. Photo JTM.

State Senator Brad Hoylman said : "They say in Albany there are two kinds of people - workhorses and show bunnies. Doris was a workhorse."

Morrison and Tom Schuler, a former Democratic district leader for Chelsea, helped Doris in her W. 20th St. apartment at the end of her life.  They and Steven Skyles-Mulligan, current Democratic district leader for Chelsea, made it possible for Doris to remain in her Chelsea apartment for as long as possible, and found her a nursing home on W. 112th St.

Born Mae Doris Clark, she was raised in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, and went to Wayne University in Detroit. She moved to New York and married journalist Frank Corrigan. Years later, Doris became his full-time caregiver when he became seriously ill. He died in 1982.

Robert Trentlyon (L with Yale cap) at the Harvard-Yale
game, 2011. Bob and Betty are away in Holland. He
is researching storm surge barriers for NYC. Bob doesn't
like this photo (Harvard won big). Selfie by JTM.

Robert Trentlyon, a member of Community Board 4, former publisher of the Chelsea-Clinton News and founder of both the Chelsea Reform Democratic Club and the Waterside Park Association, said to Al Amateau that Doris worked for his office and then just appeared on the political scene in the early 1980s:

She was always dependable and then indispensable. She came to the Chelsea-Clinton News office on 24th St. in the late 1970s after she lost an advertising job somewhere. [...] She took care of the details in everything she did.

State Senator Duane, District Leader Corrigan and
Governor (Mario) Cuomo.

Doris Corrigan joined Trentlyon in his community work and when it came to planning for the Hudson River Park - which now covers the entire west side from Battery Park to 59th Street - she came aboard for that as well.  The nine-acre Chelsea Cove now includes a skate park, lawn and carousel.

The Proclamation by then-City Council  Speaker Christine Quinn expresses "gratitude" of the City of New York to Trentlyon and Corrigan for “breaking down the wall that kept Chelsea removed from its waterfront."Speaker Christine Quinn called them “living legends of the West side.”

Rep. Carolyn Maloney (L) and former District Leader Kathy Kinsella, with
Steven Skyles-Mulligan behind at right. Photo by JT Marlin.

Trentlyon was not at the the memorial service because he is in Holland investigating the potential for barriers to prevent catastrophic storm surges of the kind that occurred during the Katrina storm. Trentlyon is now working on storm-surge barriers and is away in Holland doing research on them.

Councilman Corey
Johnson

Rep. Carolyn Maloney, whose district now takes in much of Chelsea, said: "Doris held every position she could within Chelsea. You always knew that her petitions would come back looking beautiful. And, by the way, she was a great cook as well."

Rep. Jerry Nadler praised Doris' work on parks and on the fight against the West Side Stadium as proposed sequentially by Mayors Giuliani (baseball) and Bloomberg (football).

Kathy Kinsella, former president of the Chelsea reform club said of Corrigan:

NYC Comptroller Scott
Stringer

She was famous for her short stature [just under 5 feet] and a short temper that went with it. She was impatient at times, yet a very thorough teacher. She was our go-to person who knew everything and got it all done. Fierce and forceful, kind and generous, Doris will always be with me. 

Corey Johnson, the District 3 city council member, noted that Doris remembered the trees she had planted. She was at work so many years that some of the trees she planted on the blocks have grown to their full glory. He said: "Doris was Chelsea. She was involved in every community win and every battle over the last generation."

Comptroller Scott Stringer, who spoke first, said: "In so many cases, Doris was the one who got it done."

Assemblyman Richard Gottfried said of her: "I knew and worked with Doris for over 30 years. In everything she did, whether service on Community Board 4, or as president of the Chelsea Reform Democratic Club, and later as Chelsea’s Democratic district leader and then Democratic State Committee member, Doris Corrigan was always forceful and energetic and fought for what she believed."

Sources: Some quotes above are excerpted from the reporting of Al Amateau of Chelsea Now and Tara Kyle of DNA Chelsea.

NY STATE | Recent Prosperity Originates Downstate

L to R: John Tepper Marlin, Reps. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY12)
 and Tim Bishop (D-NY1). Photo by Alice Tepper Marlin.

Rep. Tim Bishop spoke at an event over the weekend welcoming back Rep. Carolyn Maloney from China.

Bishop told the group in Bridgehampton, NY that he would be facing a challenger backed again by Tea Party bankrollers.

The reason is that NY-1 had one of the weakest majorities for Obama in the last election.

However, if the plan is to dredge up the last campaign's attacks on Bishop for not doing enough for the Suffolk County economy, as both opposition candidates promised, recent new data do not support the idea that Suffolk County has been slipping.

On the contrary, Nassau and Suffolk had New York State's lowest metro area unemployment rate in May and again in June. On a county basis, both Nassau and Suffolk had among the lowest ten unemployment rates of 62 NY State countries, averaging 4.9 percent. By comparison, the Bronx unemployment rate was 10.8 percent and Brooklyn's was 8.3 percent. The NYC unemployment rate fell slightly between June and July. The unemployment rate has increased slightly in the United States in July compared with June, seasonally adjusted, and in NY State outside of NY City. NY State’s unemployment rate was unchanged between June and July, at 6.6 percent, the lowest level since November 2008.

NY State jobs were again in July above 9 million, reports the Bureau of Labor Statistics this morning (Table D). This is the third consecutive month of jobs above 9 million, and the 20th consecutive month of jobs growth. The state added 17,300 private-sector jobs. Total private-sector jobs in NY State are at an all-time high of more than 7.6 million.  Jobs in NY State have grown in 38 of the past 43 months

Private-sector jobs have continued to grow in July 2014 compared with the same month in 2013:

United States                          +2.2%
New York State                      +1.9%
Downstate NY (10-co. area)    +2.4%
New York City                         +3.0%
Suburban Counties                 +1.2%
Nassau-Suffolk                       +1.6%
Upstate NY (52-co. area)        +0.9%

In the 10-county Downstate region, private-sector jobs grew by 2.4% over the past year. Downstate’s private-sector job growth was most rapid in New York City (+3.0 percent) and in Nassau-Suffolk (+1.6 percent).

In the 52-county Upstate region, private-sector jobs grew 0.9 percent over the past year. Private-sector job growth occurred in both the region’s metro areas (+1.0 percent) and in counties outside of metro areas (+0.3 percent). One metro area in the state lost private sector jobs between July 2013 and July 2014, i.e., Syracuse (-1.2 percent).

Rep. Bishop has been a major advocate for education in the Congress, and (private) educational and health services are the fastest-growing sector in NY State.

NY State Major Industry Sectors that Gained Jobs
 Growth between July 2013 and July 2014 (details here):
Educational & Health Services*       +53,400
Professional & Business Services     +30,600
Trade, Transportation & Utilities        +28,200
Leisure & Hospitality                         +22,200
Construction                                     +8,400
Other Services                                  +5,800
Financial Activities                                +500
Information                                           +400
Natural Resources & Mining                 +300
*Educational and health services are in the private sector.

A Tea Party opponent will have trouble making the argument that Rep. Bishop has been allowing government employment to get out of control in NY State, since government jobs in NY State fell during the year ending July 2014.

Major Sectors that Lost Jobs (Decline between July 2013 and July 2014)
Manufacturing                                     -9,200
Government**                                     -6,200
**Government jobs include public education and public health services.

NYC | To Be #1 in Tech? The Cornell-Technion Campus

Model of Planned 2 mil. sf Cornell-Technion Campus

The December 19 announcement of the winning university bid to create a high-tech campus in New York was stunning. It was preceded by mystery and secrecy.

When he was elected, Mayor Bloomberg was expected by many to be a leader in bringing technology to New York City. In 2011, in his third term, he has fulfilled this expectation.

Part of his plan was an RFP for universities to bid on using city land to build a high-tech campus. In May the Mayor also provided a roadmap for NYC to become "the leading digital city".

The Offer, the Sites and the Candidates

The Mayor offered $100 million of NYC money toward university use of underutilized NYC land along with the land itself. The three main candidate sites were Governor's Island, the Brooklyn Navy Yard and Roosevelt Island. The campus was conceived of as the "Stanford of the East", and the smart money was on Stanford winning the RFP. After all, Silicon Valley has long been #1 in venture capital investments in technology, evidence of its long expertise in spinning off high-tech companies from centers of excellence in a university environment.   

MIT was also seen as a possible candidate. The Route 128 area in Boston followed the same track as Stanford and was widely viewed as #2 in tech spinoffs. An MIT professor visiting New York City 15 years ago told me that New York City would never catch up to Boston in the tech VC arena because New York City "doesn't have the entrepreneurial spirit".

Well, guess what. The first surprise of 2011 was that the VC people were reporting that tech investments in NYC were exceeding tech investments in Boston. New York was now #2 only to the Bay Area. For whatever reason, MIT did not submit a bid.

Stanford seemed to be putting a huge amount effort into its proposal, but then it suddenly withdrew. Was this a sign that the project was just too ambitious? Or was too tied to real estate? Was this exciting idea going to be still-born?

Cornell, with its existing nexus to New York City (the Cornell-Weill Medical Center, the Cornell Club, the Cornell Institute for Labor Relations), was expected to join Stanford. But Cornell had its own idea and reached out to The Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in a series of secret meetings. Technion had the experience with spinning off companies that Cornell lacked.

Politicking meanwhile continued over the various sites. Roosevelt Island is in Rep. Carolyn Maloney's district and on October 19 she held a press conference to argue the case for this being the best site. On December 14 she announced that her campaign and petition drive had convinced the US Postal Service to take Roosevelt Island off the list of post offices to be shuttered. So for the time being a post office on Roosevelt Island was guaranteed.

The Announcements

Just as well, since four days later, on December 19, the Mayor revealed ahead of schedule that Cornell and Technion won the competition with a plan for building a facility on Roosevelt Island with 2 million square feet of space, costing $2 billion. The plan was given credibility by the announcement of the $350 million gift on top of the $100 million promised by the City of New York for infrastructure improvements and $300 million worth of land. The $350 million gift is the largest Cornell has ever received. With $750 million in hand, $2 billion doesn't seem so far away. The visionary Cornell donor was later identified as The Atlantic Philanthropies, founded and funded by Charles F. Feeney.

The Mayor must have been impressed not only by the degree of Cornell support but by the Cornell-Technion commitment to green architecture in the zero-pollution buildings themselves and in the planned academic staffing. It will also include major expertise in computer science (a given), energy efficiency and public health.

New Yorkers were ecstatic. BetaBeat ("The Lowdown on High-Tech") produced a slide show of "14 Terrifically Scientific Signs" that 2011 is "the year for New York Tech". One sign was the bypassing of Boston. Another was the materialization of the tech campus.

The Importance of the Campus

BetaBeat was being funny, but New York City may indeed soon be #1 in tech. Density is destiny and the aggregation of tech consumers and producers in NYC is going to be hard to beat when teamed up with a nerve center for high-tech research, education, innovation and financing. I have no inside information about why Stanford pulled out, but word of a $350 million gift by an alumnus to Cornell to support its bid for the tech campus may have prompted some serious questions to and by Stanford about the degree to which it could match this degree of commitment. The gift was a preemptive strike, about which much more will be written by people interested in the history and strategy of the relationship between cities and scientific knowledge and the commercial exploitation of this knowledge.

This is a breakthrough not just for New York City but for the United States. As manufacturing jobs have flowed overseas, the United States must generate new kinds of jobs - well-paid jobs. High-tech startups offer the potential for creating such jobs. University campuses that concentrate technical and business talent and provide incentives for forming startups have been proven job-generators.

I've been following this subject since 1973 when I wrote a report on "The Wealth of Cities" for the Council on Municipal Performance. From 1992 to 2006 I served three New York City Comptrollers as their Chief Economist and I worked on a report called "The NYC Software/IT Industry: How NYC Can Compete More Effectively in Information Technology" (April 1999). It shows how jobs in Information Technology in New York City grew 15 percent a year during the second half of the 1990s. I handed a copy to Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff early on in Mayor Bloomberg's first term. Here is a summary with links to the report. CUNY Chancellor Matthew Goldstein said he liked it. I think it still makes good reading in the context of the new Cornell-Technion campus. See if you agree.

Happy New Year!

NYC Seeks to Grow Jobs through Incubators

It wasn't a big national event. New York City Mayor Bloomberg visited the Entrepreneur Space in Queens, New York last week. With him were City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, Rep. Carolyn Maloney and other elected officials. The main coverage was a local story by the Queens Gazette and a press release and a YouTube clip posted by the Mayor.

However, this visit should get national attention. Bloomberg, after all, knows a thing or two about how to create jobs. Back in 1981, when there weren't a lot of incubators and in the midst of a Fed-induced inflation-fighting recession, Michael Bloomberg parlayed his $10 million Salamon Brothers severance and his shares into a giant company. Last I checked, Bloomberg L.P. had 9,000 employees in the New York City area alone (a lot more than the entire staff of the U.S. Senate). Also, by bringing more transparency to capital markets, the company argues with some basis that it is contributing to growth of jobs outside of New York.

The nation is stuck in liquidity doldrums that Japan has made famous. Creating jobs is today's public-policy Priority One, the Tea Party's debt exorcisers notwithstanding. Mr. Bloomberg’s skill at building a business empire from scratch inspired scared New Yorkers to vote for him after 9/11. They elected an entrepreneur as mayor with the expectation that a successful business leader would surely would help the City hold on to its jobs and create new ones.

So what is the Mayor doing now, ten years after 9/11 and 30 years after he launched his business? He is recognizing the importance encouraging entrepreneurship, and he is also recognizing the fact that few wannabe entrepreneurs have the startup capital he began with, or the training he received at Salamon Brothers.

To assist new entrepreneurs, in 2009 Mayor Bloomberg launched nine business incubators thoughout NYC, hosting more than 500 start-up businesses and more than 800 jobs. The incubatees have raised $39 million in private capital so far. Many are graduating from their incubators.

Some New York City incubators are even exporting their support skills elsewhere. Green Spaces, a green incubator that started in Brooklyn has cloned itself in Manhattan and has now extended its efforts to Colorado, backing the Green Route Festival this Saturday in Denver.

The Entrepreneur Space in Queens is a good example of an incubator. It allows local food-oriented companies to avoid investing in their own commercial grade kitchens. For a fee, it provides four such kitchens, meeting Health Department standards, shared 24 hours a day by 120 businesses. The companies produce organic dog biscuits, ethnic foods, and pies, cakes and cookies. The kitchens are also used by catering services. The public-private Entrepreneur Space partnership includes incubator services funded by New York City - low-cost workstations, mentoring programs and job training.

Excerpts from comments of three elected officials who were on the tour of the incubator follow:

City Council Speaker Quinn:

These workspaces are groundbreaking initiatives, aiding culinary entrepreneurs to expand their businesses while bolstering the multibillion dollar food industry in New York City.

Mayor Bloomberg:

When we launched the first business incubator in 2009 to make it easier for entrepreneurs to turn their ideas into local businesses and jobs, we pledged to open more if it was successful. Now, we’re identifying opportunities to expand the program even further. We want New York City to be the most welcoming city in the country for people who want to start a business.

Rep. Maloney:

I agree wholeheartedly with President Obama that Congress needs to get moving to support job creation: we need to reauthorize the cut in payroll taxes we approved in the last Congress, which will give families an extra $1,000 per year, on average. I’d like to commend Mayor Bloomberg on the success of New York’s business incubators. The small businesses taking root here are truly the future of New York. This kind of innovation is one of the reasons New York is doing better than the national average.

Congratulations to the Mayor. Recent reports suggest that the New York City area has passed Boston in the amount of venture capital money it is raising. NYC is now second only to the Bay Area. Together, NYC and Boston VC funding exceeds what is going into the Bay Area. The hot areas for VC funding are web-focused tech companies. Just as demand from Wall Street drove growth of NYC’s tech companies in the 1990s, today the driver, says Dave Broadwin of Foley Hoag, is the advertising industry.

NYC needs to do everything we can to encourage entrepreneurship in tech development and every industry!