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COMIDA, the County of Monroe Industrial Development Agency, provides grants and other incentives to keep Rochester companies in the area and to reward the creation of local jobs. But there have been plenty of examples, ABB and Gleason to name two, where the job creation didn’t happen. In fact, in the case of ABB, they closed their facility and left the area completely. But even when it succeeds, it doesn’t do all that well. According to a review by the local newspaper less than 1/4th of the grants between 2001 and 2005 resulted in more than 100 jobs.
As annoying as that is, the problem is more than COMIDA’s incompetence. This is Rochester, in upstate NY. The state is losing population and companies as it is, and upstate is doing worse than the average across the state. While I’m not advocating giving up, we perhaps need to scale our expectations to match reality.
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