{"id":155271,"date":"2021-01-15T03:43:07","date_gmt":"2021-01-15T00:43:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/andrew-cuomos-public-construction-plans-come-at-a-huge-price\/"},"modified":"2021-01-15T03:43:07","modified_gmt":"2021-01-15T00:43:07","slug":"andrew-cuomos-public-construction-plans-come-at-a-huge-price","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/andrew-cuomos-public-construction-plans-come-at-a-huge-price\/","title":{"rendered":"#Andrew Cuomo’s public-construction plans come at a huge price"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Andrew Cuomo’s public-construction plans come at a huge price<\/strong>”
\n<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cThese are not ordinary times,\u201d Gov. Andrew Cuomo intoned Thursday as he began a State of the State follow-up speech devoted to New York\u2019s infrastructure needs \u2014 without accounting for the fact that Empire State infrastructure spending is uniquely prone to boondoggle.<\/p>\n

What followed was, in fact, not out of the ordinary, if only by recent Cuomo standards: a long and mostly familiar list of big capital projects \u2014 some just completed, such as Moynihan Station, and others underway, such as the Javits Center expansion \u2014 coupled with an ever-growing total price-tag, all ultimately backed by uncertain funding sources.<\/p>\n

Five years ago this month, \u00adCuomo made a splash by \u00adannouncing $100 billion worth of \u201ctransformative\u201d infrastructure projects. Two years later, he unveiled what he said was an additional $150 billion \u201cinvestment\u201d in infrastructure.<\/p>\n

In January 2019, he added $25 billion to that program, bringing the total he\u2019d proposed since 2016 to $275 billion.<\/p>\n

And now he has boosted that number to $306 billion, to be spent over a conveniently unspecified period of time, paid for in unspecified ways.<\/p>\n

It is, he says, \u201cnot just the largest infrastructure plan in New York history,\u201d but \u201cthe largest, most ambitious plan of any state in the nation.\u201d This is no doubt true. But there is also no other state that would get less bang for 306 billion bucks.<\/p>\n

New York\u2019s capital construction programs are notoriously costly and wasteful, thanks to several factors the governor and the state Legislature ultimately have the power to change \u2014 but seem intent on making worse.<\/p>\n

Foremost is New York\u2019s misnamed \u201cprevailing wage\u201d law, which mandates labor costs that are neither truly prevailing nor limited to wages. As app<\/a>lied by the state Labor Department, workers on public construction projects must be paid the hourly rates prescribed in regional building-trades union contracts, including supplemental benefits whose costs match or exceed wages.<\/p>\n

Construction workers in the New York City region are among the most expensive in the world, with combined pay and benefit packages reaching $90 an hour for laborers, more than $100 an hour for skilled positions such as carpenters and plumbers and higher still for operating engineers.<\/p>\n

Because it also effectively \u00adrequires contractors on public-works projects to organize and assign work as required by inefficient union rules, the prevailing-wage law drives up total construction costs by 13 to 25 percent, depending on the region, according to my research for the Empire Center. In other words, that $306 billion cited by the governor includes a cost premium of $35 to $60 billion.<\/p>\n

Cuomo has made matters worse by pushing for more use of \u201cproject labor agreements,\u201d or PLAs, on public works projects. Mandatory PLAs have the effect of preventing non-union contractors from bidding on jobs, which shrinks the pool of eligible bidders and further drives up costs.<\/p>\n

Compounding the impact of \u00adlabor-union preferences is New York\u2019s unique Scaffold Law, which significantly raises liability-insurance costs by imposing \u201cabsolute liability\u201d on contractors and property owners for elevation-related injuries to workers.<\/p>\n

Cuomo, however, has always talked as if money should be no object when it comes to capital spending. Seizing on COVID-19 and its aftermath as the equivalent of \u201cwar,\u201d the governor says it\u2019s \u00adoptimal to pour even more money into infrastructure now, \u201cwhen the interest rates are low, when New Yorkers are looking for work and when we can optimize the value of our investments.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yes, low interest rates reduce borrowing costs \u2014 but that\u2019s only part of the overall debt equation. Principal must be repaid from a revenue source. And revenue from all sources \u2014 taxes, tolls, fares and fees \u2014 is down sharply in the wake of the pandemic, which is why both the state and city budgets are flooding with red ink.<\/p>\n

Cuomo made it clear that he \u00adexpects to see a big boost in federal infrastructure spending under incoming President Joe Biden \u2014 which certainly looks like a safe bet. Still, $306 billion is a tall order, even if the feds foot a larger share of the bill.<\/p>\n

Seeking to link his program to Franklin Roosevelt\u2019s response to the Great Depression, Cuomo pledged to \u201clearn from the past as we move forward.\u201d He added: \u201cI am not sure that history repeats itself, but I believe, as Mark Twain said, that it \u2018rhymes.\u2019\u200a\u201d<\/p>\n

In this case, we\u2019re looking for something that rhymes with \u201cdebt\u201d and \u201ctaxes.\u201d<\/p>\n

E.J. McMahon is a senior fellow at Empire Center. Twitter<\/a>: @EJMEJ<\/em>\n <\/div>\n

If you liked the article, do not forget to share it with your friends. Follow us on\u00a0Google News<\/a><\/span>\u00a0too, click on the star and choose us from your favorites.<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n

For forums sites go to Forum.BuradaBiliyorum.Com<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

If you want to read more News<\/a> articles, you can visit our News category.<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#Andrew Cuomo’s public-construction plans come at a huge price” \u201cThese are not ordinary times,\u201d Gov. Andrew Cuomo intoned Thursday as he began a State of the State follow-up speech devoted to New York\u2019s infrastructure needs \u2014 without accounting for the fact that Empire State infrastructure spending is uniquely prone to boondoggle. What followed was, in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":155272,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/01\/50832339588_1Cuomo-SOTS-4.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[89450,70430,72036,88916],"class_list":["post-155271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-1-14-21","tag-andrew-cuomo","tag-infrastructure","tag-state-of-the-state"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155271\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/155272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}