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Over Five Years, 200 Active IDA Projects Have Yielded More Than 4,400 Jobs & $47 Million In Taxes
By Steve Porath & Siddhantika Thorat
Numbers and data. In today’s world, in which facts and the truth have somehow become subjective realities, numbers and data still remain the best way of determining impact. Be it a sports score or an accounting bottom line, numbers and data bring everything down to a final result.
In economic development, when all is said and done, the impact of an economic development project – or the effectiveness of the agency that administers it – can ultimately be boiled down to two numbers in two categories – jobs and taxes. The consequence of new jobs and new taxes provide benefits to the community in many ways – improving the quality of life of the community by strengthening its fiscal health. Doing so reinforces our mission of enabling our citizens the ability to live here, work here and play here.
For those unfamiliar, New York’s industrial development agencies are established by State statute and empower the agencies to provide various financial incentives to encourage businesses to locate, stay and expand in those communities. By and large, IDAs are established in every county, as well as many cities and even towns. Further, each year, every IDA is required to file all its project information to the state and attest to its accuracy. This compilation of data includes jobs retained and created, temporary construction jobs and permanent jobs, property taxes paid, incentives provided and every bit of information that helps gauge an IDA’s performance and effectiveness. As noted earlier, the report is numbers and data – not public relations “spin”. While compiling the data annually is intensive, its also satisfying in its purity.
In an earlier article, we discussed the cost/benefit analysis of an IDA project (Rockland Business Journal, July 21, 2025). The impact of incentives issued vs. benefits received reveals the – excuse the phrase – “trickle down effect” of an economic development project. Today, let us stay with a big picture view.
For our purposes, let us look at a five-year window of the Rockland IDA’s results (as reported to the State). The window is fiscal years 2020 through 2024.
Number of Active IDA projects:
2020: 32
2021: 33
2022: 45
2023: 48
2024: 44
The story behind the numbers… Due to COVID, the years 2020-21 stayed mostly flat due to an economy grinding to halt. The following years, projects picked up dramatically. The type of projects ranged from new office buildings and warehouses to datacenters, to manufacturing facilities, and in more recent years, an influx of much-needed market rate and affordable housing projects.
Net Jobs Created:
The period of 2020-2024 saw 4,449 new jobs created… reflecting permanent jobs by the employers of the projects and the construction jobs created who built, renovated, and equipped the facilities.
Average FTE Salary:
The average salary of those 4,449 permanent and temporary (construction) jobs rose from $55,000 to $68,000 per job.
Property Taxes Paid:
During the 5-year period, the companies paid $47,556,825.99 in property taxes. These taxes, captured under the IDA’s PILOT (payment in lieu of taxes) agreements, reflect negotiated tax agreements between the company/property owner and the involved taxing entities (county, town, school, and village).
The breakdown behind each of the numbers detailed above, and the comparison of what the alternative number(s) would be if there was no project, would cause this article to easily triple in length. So, in the spirit of a digestible snapshot… these numbers simply reflect the raw data of the IDA’s economic development impact over the past five, full fiscal years. A further number not detailed above is the several billion dollars of total investment of the companies to build, renovate and equip their facilities.
Just as important as the raw numbers are the obligations of each of the companies receiving IDA incentives. The obligations require every company to create and maintain the jobs it represented as the IDA considered granting incentives. The companies agree to maintain the business during the project period and pay the taxes owed. All these conditions are enforced by the IDA’s authority to recapture every penny of incentives provided should the company fail to perform as contractually promised. The certainty and predictability of anticipated taxes paid, as well as jobs created and maintained, underscores the value of sound economic development.
And that story is told with numbers and data.
Steve Porath is Executive Director of the Rockland Industrial Development Agency. Siddhantika Thorat is a Business Analyst with the Rockland Industrial Development Agency
