In
Utica, a former industrial hub in upstate New York where the near
collapse of manufacturing has made for a scarcity of jobs and a rarity
of good news, the announcement in August 2015 that an Austrian chip
maker had decided to put down roots in a fabrication plant built by the
state was cause for jubilation.
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo
celebrated with an appearance in Utica, promising $585 million in state
funds to cement the public-private partnership, which was to create
1,000 jobs. Some in the crowd wept with emotion.
But
last week, after months of delays and mismanagement that culminated in
September with federal prosecutors revealing a far-reaching bribery and bid-rigging scheme, state and local officials said that the Austrian chip maker, AMS, had abandoned the project.
The
Utica project was merely one chunk of the multibillion-dollar
investment with which the Cuomo administration has pledged to seed
nanotechnology and high-tech industries in upstate cities starved for
economic growth.
But
the corruption scheme outlined by federal prosecutors has strained the
entire nanotechnology program, threatening to knock economic progress
off course in places like Utica, where growth was never certain in the
best of times.
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Source: The New York Times (via The Empire Report)
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