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Hudson Valley Business ReviewLooking Forward 2013

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carol zaloom

January 17, 2013 ● Ulster Publishing ● hudsonvalleybusinessreview.com

Going for the

gold

Empowering regionalism

When our reporters recently asked people questions about re-

gionalism, they — and we — were surprised by how much the conversa-tion tended to come back to governor Andrew Cuomo’s new system of allocation of resources organized by region. The fact that tangible state resources are being competed for seems to have entirely changed the ball

game of state political allocation. It has empowered regionalism to an unanticipated extent.To use one of the governor’s favorite buzzwords, there has been a transformation of

regionalism. Rather than the traditional horse-trading among municipalities and coun-ties for the division of spoils that it has been since time immemorial, regionalism is fast

Continued on Page 2

2 January 17, 2013Looking Forward|

EDITORIAL

managing editor: Geddy Sveikauskas

copy editors: Dan Barton, Brian Hollander

contributors: Phyllis McCabe, Paul Smart,

Susan Barnett, Violet Snow, Lauren Thomas,

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Hudson Valley Business Review: Looking Forward is an annual publication produced by Ulster Publishing, an independent media company in with offi ces in Kingston and New Paltz, NY. It is distributed in the company’s fi ve weekly newspapers and separately at select locations.

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becoming a locally driven program to pursue mea-surable state revitalization objectives.

How was this accomplished? Several principles are involved.

First, a statewide annual competition for pro-posals has been established. The pot being com-peted for by non-profits and local governments contains hundreds of millions of dollars of state grants and loans available through Empire State Development.

Secondly, other major state departments — where there’s a lot of money — are being asked to contribute out of their own budgets. This encourag-es a closer relationship between state budgets and local needs. Despite the rhetoric about bottom-up decision-making, the decisions about who gets the money are made in Albany. So far the process has favored applicants based on considerations other than intra-regional per-capita distribution.

Thirdly, the regional pots of money are being augmented by significant bonuses awarded by the state to regions whose proposals are most likely to further the region’s stated goals. Powerful financial incentives (approximately one dollar of every three in this year’s go-round) reinforce regional partici-pation. In the halls of regionalism, the availability of money tends to concentrate many a mind.

There are weaknesses to the evolving plan, No-body’s quite sure when the money that has been awarded will come, how it will be administered, and in what time frame projects will be complet-ed. The regional economic advisory committees, which are very large, are composed almost entire-ly of the usual suspects unused to the new process. Might it be only a matter of time before political tradeoffs become more common in the setting of intra-regional priorities? Or will a new commit-ment to regional thinking take root?

We shall see.Geddy Sveikauskas

Empowering regionalismcontinued from Page 1

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3January 17, 2013Looking Forward |

Ready to competeSUNY New Paltz looks toward further evolution

Geddy Sveikauskas

Colleges have much longer mat-

uration processes than the students they try to educate. It took 57 years for the New Paltz Classical School to become the New Paltz Training and Normal School. It took anoth-

er 63 years before the teachers’ college became one of the 30 schools folded into the new public state university system. Now that 65 years have passed since that signal event, perhaps the insti-tution will soon be ready to evolve another step.

By many indicators of selectivity, SUNY New Paltz has been improving in recent years. Average SAT scores, higher than at most SUNY schools, have increased markedly. Entering students have to have higher grades in high school than they used to. Graduation rates are increasing rapidly, too. And national surveys of public universities show New Paltz improving its quality ranking steadily.

Other metrics show the college remains in a competitive position. New faculty continues to re-plenish the teaching ranks. Although the number of New York high-school graduates is expected to decrease in the next few years, its applications show New Paltz in a good position to hold its own during the shortfall.

There’s substantial further progress to be made, of course. In his State of the College address last year, college president Dr. Donald Christian noted that only one student among the high-school vale-dictorians and salutatorians in Ulster County last year planned on attending New Paltz. Some of the best students at the local community colleges also transfer to private colleges, “We must continue to combat the mystique that a private college educa-tion is better than anything New Paltz has to of-fer,” said Christian.

Christian acknowledges that long-distance learning, colleges offering credits for experience, and massive on-line open web courses (MOOCs) are becoming ever more important trends in edu-cation. But he is convinced that SUNY New Paltz’s future will be as a liberal-arts college with an ex-panded presence in the community. He praises some new faculty members for possessing skills and expertise that are in great demand.

What are the goals of a New Paltz education? It’s not just what a student learns in his or her ma-jor field. According to the Association of America’s Colleges and Universities, of which Christian is an active member, a well-rounded college education includes broad intellectual knowledge, critical thinking, creative problem-solving and techno-logical and communications skills.

Employers asked to rank what colleges should place more emphasis on stress the quality of writ-ten and oral communications above all else. Some 88 per cent of employers say that the challenges their employees face within their organizations are more complex today than they were in the past. Nearly two-thirds of employers say college graduates need both a broad range of skills and knowledge and in-depth knowledge and skills in a specific field.

The importance of housingConcerned about remaining competitive in at-

tracting transfer students, the institution has fo-cused on expanding housing options in New Paltz, including the huge and controversial Park Point project. The college’s surveys, according to Chris-tian, have shown that over half of the transfer students would live in apartments in or near the campus if these were available.

Expanded housing options would let students “remain more connected with campus life than is currently possible,” in Christian’s words. Non-commuting students would become less transient and have a richer college experience. In the long run, that’s an important goal for the evolution of the college. But in his remarks on the subject,

Christian has not yet acknowledged the addi-tional costs an expanded campus would cause for the provision of services by the community. That problem must be addressed if Park Point is to fly.

The number of graduate students, particularly in education, has been dropping. New Paltz is planning to inaugurate a program in mechanical engineering. Christian thinks a certificate in 3D fabrication and other art-technology combina-tions would attract students. A partnership with Clarkson and others for a biotech program is pos-sible. So is a fresh approach to education courses.

The college offers 100 undergraduate degree programs and 50 graduate programs.

A cultural hub The New Paltz college continues to evolve into

the status of a broader university. As it does, its president believes, New Paltz will become more of a cultural hub in the Hudson Valley, attracting meetings, conferences and outside programs.

The six community colleges make the structure of public college education in the region unique in the state, Christian believes. He says Dutchess currently boasts the biggest feeder community college to New Paltz.

Enrollment director L. David Eaton provided data on the county of residence for approximately 22,375 New Paltz alumni/ae under 65 years who

reside in the Hudson Valley. The information showed 7625 graduates resident in Ulster County, 5125 in Dutchess, 5000 in Orange, 1940 in West-chester, 1310 in Rockland, 940 in Sullivan, and 435 in Putnam County.

An additional 29,125 grads live elsewhere, mostly in New York City and on Long Island.

Meanwhile, after several painful years of budget cuts and staff reductions, New Paltz is position-ing itself for a shift in the basis for funding among SUNY campuses that might or might not be favor-able to it. But there’s hope on the horizon. In last week’s gubernatorial state-of-the-state speech, Andrew Cuomo proposed a new round of state education funding that would offer public col-leges the opportunity to compete for system-wide grants. Successful projects would be selected in a competitive manner based on economic impact, advancement of academic goals, innovation and collaboration, he said.

New Paltz is ready to compete, Christian said.Meanwhile, the college has been preparing an

update to its own strategic plan. A draft plan with revisions has been circulated to members of the committee shepherding it. It’s expected that the plan will be circulated to the campus com-munity this spring. Members of that community will be invited to attend open forums to discuss the document.

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SUNY New Paltz President Donald Christian speaks at a September 11th memorial service on campus in 2011.


Talking about progressNew system for allocating state grants and loans undergoes a trial by fi re

Paul Smart with editorial support from Geddy Sveikauskas

I couldn’t fathom what my wife was

speaking about when she first started men-tioning something I heard as “the Red Sea grants” last spring. It was a busy time in our lives. We were mixing end-of-school-year business for our six-year-old with a host

of work projects on both our parts. Though up here in Greene County we have a Cairo, we knew ourselves to be distant from the city only a de-sert away from where Moses parted the Red Sea. I figured the state must mean someplace else.

It turns out that my wife Fawn was talking about events affecting her position as gallery di-rector at the Greene County Council for the Arts and director of Catskill’s Masters on Main Street program, which was trying to fill vacant store-fronts with art-school art. Applications were be-ing solicited for Governor Andrew Cuomo’s plan to replace the old Empire Zones with a weightier package of competitive regional economic devel-opment community grants, nicknamed for their acronym, RED-C.

A July 16 state deadline was putting pressure on us. The grant cycle at hand involved some $738 million statewide, and we understood that there was going to be a new emphasis this year on the arts and tourism-related funding.

The process included the granting of “tokens” to be used as password for the Consolidated Funding Application, or CFA system. There was a registra-tion process for non-profits working directly with the state agencies. Involved were such weighty combinations of alphabet letters as Empire State Development (ESD), the state Canal Corporation, Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), Environmental Facilities Corpora-tion (EFC), Homes and Community Renewal, New York Power Authority (NYPA), Department of Labor, Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation (OPRHC), the departments of State, Environmental Conservation (DOD and DEC), and Agriculture and Markets, and the state Coun-cil on the Arts (NYSCA). We were told there was a broad potpourri of priority categories, including direct assistance to businesses, community de-velopment, agricultural economic development, waterfront revitalization, energy improvements, environmental improvements, sustainability, workforce development and low-cost financing.

In a bureaucratic sort of way, the instructions were meant to be encouraging. “Many changes have been made to make navigating through the

process of filling out an application eas-ier,” explained the instructions my wife showed me early on in the process. “It is now easier for ap-plicants to go back to questions already an-swered. Additionally, information is saved more frequently and applicants have the ability to directly upload attachments

into the system.”“Over 30 public workshops” would be held to

aid the process. Review of proposals would be by “appropriate work group,” with final decisions by “the full council,” under the direction of lieuten-ant governor Robert Duffy. Applicants were asked to contact their regional councils, and local reps on each, for answers during their application process. The Catskills-area counties are divided among four regions.

Questioning the processMy wife started to talk with friends in other lo-

cal arts organizations. What was the most effec-tive way to get a slice of this huge pie of funding?

“Regional councils are about making state gov-ernment work better for businesses to create an environment that will put New Yorkers back to work,” read the directions. “Each council is staffed by representatives from a broad spectrum of state agencies who will help identify priority projects and potential funding sources within their agen-cies and then directly assist applicants throughout every step of the process.”

By mid-June, the state first started announc-ing its new round of RED-C applications. The deadline was a month away. Fawn had worked up a project with a pair of cultural organizations in Prattsville, which was still reeling from the ef-fects of Tropical Storm Irene nine months earlier,

and in Hunter, where a private trust, the Catskill Mountain Foundation, runs a community devel-opment and arts organization. Similar efforts, we found, were under way on the part of the Thomas Cole House in Catskill, as well as by Village of Catskill (in tandem with Greene County) and sev-eral entities around Windham, another tourism-based community which had received economic development funding in 2011.

I found out about many applications from fur-ther afield, too. A push was under way to complete land purchases and construction on a massive rail-trail network in the eastern portion of Columbia County, hooking into similar efforts in Dutchess County to the south. There were a number of wa-terfront projects in Hudson. Agricultural industry efforts around the region seemed centered around the Farm To Table Co-Packers enterprise that’s been in Ulster County’s old Tech City complex for some years. There were significant community housing efforts in the Mid-Hudson region, a long-expected Kingston waterfront development along the Hudson, and a major high-tech web project out of Marist College based on the building of a new cloud computing center there.

“Final attachments related to program specific requirements should be uploaded on the system,” said the instructions for the July 16 deadline. Though the deadline was concurrent with the first weeks of our son’s summer vacation, Fawn man-aged to complete the application on time. “Scoring by the appropriate regional councils and agencies is expected to be finalized by the end of August,” said the state. “The agencies that administer the program will exercise due diligence to determine relevant legal issues and potential disqualifying concerns, and assign a technical score to the CFA.”

In early September, the promised public meet-ings started occurring, in most cases without much advance notice. The Hudson Register-Star reported on a sparsely-attended September 7 meeting at the local library, announced only on the regional economic development agency’s website three days earlier. Those who showed up asked how to apply and were told it was too late. When they asked who had applied, they were told that information wasn’t available yet.

When members of the Greene County audience asked how they were being represented, they were told that their man, Bank of Greene County presi-dent Don Gibson, had resigned from the region-al advisory council earlier. My wife said she had heard he had quit out of frustration.

How long can one expect to wait for final pay-ment from the State? Chip Seamans, President and General Manager at Windham Mountain in Greene County, was granted $1.5 million in the first round of RED-C grants announced

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in December of 2011. His project, Destina-tion Windham, is to be a revamping of the ski mountain as an all-season tourism destination.“We have yet to spend all the money and submit our receipts,” Seamans said this week. “We are hoping to finish the proj-ect this fall and be reimbursed next winter.”Even though 2011 was lambasted by many for having gotten started late, and been run in a con-fusing fashion, the Windham exec had nothing but kudos for the program...as did most folks in northern and western New York, which received the largest sums of RED-C grants its first year out.

Robert Duffy defended what happened. “This process is transformational,” he said. “He [Cuo-mo] did not choose to pit upstate against down-state. It is an equal, fair process.”

Yes and no. All ten economic development re-gions got roughly similar magnitudes of state CFA money in 2012, ranging from a high of $96.2 mil-lion for the Finger Lakes Region to a low of $50.3 million for the Capital Region. A big fuss was made over the fact that what turned out to be five regions, including the mid-Hudson, got to split an extra $200 million, $40 million for each. The populations and economic conditions in the ten regions are dramatically different from each oth-er. In the most recent round of these allegedly job-creating awards, New York City got $6 per capita, Long Island $21 per capita, and the Mid-Hudson Region $40 per capita. In contrast, the Mohawk Valley was awarded $120 per capita, the Southern Tier $149 per capita, and the North Country $208 per capita. The Capital Region was awarded $47 per capita.

Secondly, the state government, proudly refer-ring to the process as bottom-up rather than top-down, claimed that the regional advisory councils had made the funding recommendations. Though the regional advisory councils did indeed exercise their right of recommendation, the decisions were made in the governor’s office. The Mid-Hudson’s regional council was told, according to its co-chair Len Schleifer, that its priorities were given 20 per cent weight in the final project rankings. And calls made over recent weeks to those whom we know serving on advisory councils were invariably re-

ferred to press people in the governor’s office.Third and finally, the CFA is about economic

development only in the broadest sense of the phrase. Consisting of a mixed bag of ESD stimu-lus money and other-agency funding, its funding went to a broad-ranging list of community de-velopment projects. Though a mislabeling, this emphasis on “soft development’” is not neces-sarily a bad thing. Economic development often benefits from improvements in the physical, envi-ronmental, cultural and human infrastructures of the state. Whether an investment will eventually prove a wise or a foolish use of state funds isn’t always known when it is made.

Betting on winners and losersAnnouncement of the second round of grants

came out on December 8. Greene County was awarded funding for nine projects that involved $1.584 million, plus $950,000 more split with other counties. The cultural tourism corridor project my wife wrote a grant proposal for got $150,000 in state arts money, about half of what was requested.

Some $600,000 went to a Village of Catskill walking loop, and $250,000 to repair two hurricane-devastated parks in Prattsville. The Catskill Mountain Housing Development Corp. got $300,000 toward housing projects in Prat-tsville and Windham. Infrastructure engineer-ing projects were awarded a total of $84,000 from DEC. Some $600,000 in NYSERDA money will be spent on schemes for heating with wood-pellet boilers in the region. Albany tourism got $300,000 in ESD money for tourism planning, and the Cole House got $50,000 to further de-velop art trails.

At first, all I heard were hosannahs in our household. A lot of good local projects had gotten funding.

Just south of us the Mid Hudson region re-ceived $92.8 million for 84 projects — including some $25 million in bonus money. We thought the $775,000 for the food hub in Kingston was great, as was the three-million-dollar cloud com-puting center down in Poughkeepsie, with its local job training and cheaper web-storage possibilities

for everyone. Important for Ulster County were the million

dollars for advanced manufacturing awarded to The Solar Energy Consortium. The $1.5-millionto help convert a surplus Kingston school (Sophie Finn) for use by Ulster County Community Col-lege was significant. And that mile-long Hudson Landing promenade on both sides of the City of Kingston/Town of Ulster municipal boundary ($1.2 million) would be fun. The Mohonk Pre-serve got $500,000 for new land purchases be-tween the village and the Shawangunk ridgeline in New Paltz.

Also funded were a plethora of smaller proj-ects throughout the Mid Hudson region. Of the $65 million in state money allocated by county in this funding round, about $23 million will be invested in Westchester County, $22 million in Orange, almost eight million in Dutchess, six in Ulster, four in Sullivan, almost two in Rockland, and $375,000 in Putnam.

According to conventional thinking, govern-ment is not good at betting on market winner and losers. But governmental activities inescapably provide the social milieu, the incentives and the context in which markets operate. So these pub-lic investments continue. Why not shed light on them, therefore, so that the public can participate better in judging their effectiveness? In doing that, the Cuomo administration seems to have un-earthed a suppressed hunger for public participa-tion that has added to his political popularity.

Who to call?Several weeks later, the new realities of contem-

porary economic development are settling in. My wife has to implement the arts tourism project she envisioned, coordinating meetings with cash-strapped cultural organizations. But there’s no one to answer questions regarding payments and reporting structures.

“This all has bugs, and the bugs are significant,” she tells me. “There’s no timeline. The main office is unresponsive, as is the arts council, the agency we worked with. They have everybody sitting on the edges of their seats now. If I knew who to call I’d be able to relax.”

Looking through all the pages of information available to date on these grants, I find that as far as I can tell funds won’t be made available until projects are completed. Presumably, matching grants and in-kind contributions will be charted somewhere. This is the modern way of public funding. You say something’s budgeted, you take bank loans or whatever, and then you wait to get paid back, hoping that nothing happens in the halls of government that results in your being overlooked. After-the-fact budget cutting for state cultural organizations is not unheard of.

When I tell my wife what I’m suspecting, she sighs. But then she has to get back to the work she and

so many others in the lower ends of the state’s new $738-million regional economic development sweepstakes have committed to.

Talk about progress.

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Conversion of the surplus Sophie Finn Elementary School in Kingston into a SUNY-Ulster satellite campus received $1.5 million from the state.

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The Mohonk Preserve got $500,000 for the land purchase that will keep the grand entranceway and bucolic fi elds off Butterville Road intact forever.


The health of healthcareFederal legislation continues to have an enormous impact on the region

Geddy Sveikauskas

The movement toward implemen-

tation of the federal Affordable Care Act will continue in 2013 as one of the very biggest issues in American society. It’s going to be as big an is-sue in 2014, and in 2015 as well.

And every year beyond that for perhaps a decade. So we might as well be prepared to deal with it.

Health insurers and most provider organiza-tions are better prepared than they were a couple of years ago. The provisions of the federal legisla-tion require them to come to terms with the sub-sidized healthcare benefit exchanges scheduled to go into business in every state of the nation less than a year from now.

Other deadlines are looming, too. The players are scrambling to participate in a variety of exper-iments, figuring out how most effectively to find their niche in cooperation with other healthcare organizations. Most if not all are also wrestling with the implementation of electronic health re-cords and other tools of information technology.

By October 31 of this year, health insurers will be competing for New York customers in the state-run health benefit exchange. This is no small enterprise. New York, one of the most aggressive states in setting up its state-run health benefit ex-change, is getting tens of millions of dollars in the

form of federal grants to fund implementation.According to the 2009 American Community

Survey, some 121,000 of the medically uninsured in the seven counties of the mid-Hudson region (Westchester, Putnam, Rockland, Dutchess, Or-ange, Sullivan and Ulster counties) will gain cov-erage as a result of the ACA. With the state health benefit exchange in place, the uninsured in the region will decrease from 15 per cent to nine per cent of the population.

How’re we doing?The national debate has finally changed. Just

saying no to Obamacare no longer seems a viable

solution for its opponents. “Just saying no and do-ing nothing in return is a recipe for disaster,” Forbes blogger Avik Roy (who also writes for National Review) advised a couple of months ago. “First of all, our healthcare entitlements continue to grow unabated, and solutions to this problem are even more urgent today than they were yesterday,” Roy wrote. “Second, the growing unaffordability of healthcare is one of the biggest challenges facing lower-and-middle-income Americans…The rising cost of health insurance is the reason that middle-class wages have been stagnant for a decade.”

With 15 per cent of Americans lacking health insurance and many more teetering on the edge of losing their coverage, voters with insecure health insurance are a huge political constituency. What Republican policies are directly targeted to this group? “If you are a voter who will get subsidized insurance under Obamacare in 2014,” Roy asked rhetorically, “will you vote for someone in 2016 who seeks to take those subsidies away without a better solution in their place?”

In recent weeks, the RAND Corporation, which had previously published a study predicting great healthcare savings, issued an assessment which made the network television news. Digital health records won’t create the kind of cost savings pre-dicted in the earlier RAND study until the tech-nology is far more widespread and is being used to its full potential, a pair of RAND researchers concluded. “We’ve not achieved the productivity and quality benefits that are unquestionably there for the taking,” said Dr. Arthur Kellermann, one of the recent study’s authors.

Late last month Brookings healthcare expert Henry J. Aaron wrote a piece warning that the political storms over healthcare reform were far from over. He claimed not to be the partisan of either the pessimistic or the optimistic view. “The major challenge will be to make sure that the sys-tem works in enough places and fast enough to permit supporters to point to the successes and explain that the inevitable glitches are reparable,” Aaron wrote. “It is also worth noting that were Congress not neck-deep in a swamp of partner-ship legislators could find ways to minimize the problems that remain.”

It helps to have a long view. Remember all the eco-nomic studies of the 1970 and 1980s that failed to find productivity improvements due to investments in computers and in information technology? Most economists have attributed the unexpected spurt in the nation’s productivity growth rate in the 1990s to the investment of the previous decades.

Assessing electronic recordsWell, do electronic health records (EHRs) im-

prove healthcare performance or don’t they? Sev-eral early large studies of the effect of electronic records on ambulatory care have been inconclu-sive.

A group of five researchers this past October published a thorough study of ambulatory prac-tices in the Hudson Valley, comparing the perfor-mance for nine quality measures of 204 doctors using electronic records with that of 262 using pa-per systems. For five of the nine quality measures, they found a positive association between EHRs and ambulatory quality in a community-based setting. EHR use brought a higher quality of care.

Though evaluation of single studies is always difficult, this one was sufficiently rigorous that it was published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

Since the data was gathered, the proportion of Hudson Valley physicians to have adopted EHRs has increased to over 90 per cent.

Information technologyMay 6 will be a big day for John Finch, chief

information and community officer for HealthAl-liance of the Hudson Valley (HAHV). It is the day he hopes to finish implementation of the McKes-son computer software systems that will meet the first-stage “meaningful-use” standards of the federal government. July 1 is the actual deadline when the system “goes live.” Successful imple-mentation of the new software will make HAHV eligible for $12 million in federal reimbursement, payable over the next four years.

“We’ll get support if we do it right,” said Finch.The federal government has been spending tens

of billions of dollars on the adoption of informa-tion technology by healthcare providers. Indi-vidual doctors were incentivized approximately $40,000 apiece to adopt information systems that could communicate electronic records to other providers (“interoperability”). The primary-care providers of the Hudson Valley have been among the most aggressive adopters of information tech-

The national debate has fi nally

changed. Just saying no to

Obamacare no longer seems a

viable solution for its opponents.


nology under this legislation.“People need to become aware,” said Kevin Da-

hill, president of the Suburban Hospital Alliance of New York State, a consortium of 51 not-for-profit and public hospitals on Long Island and in the Hudson Valley. “There’s massive transforma-tion going on.”

Already wrestling with implementation dead-lines, the hospitals are also struggling to build secure, accurate and up-to-date electronic health records that will share data among patients, pay-ers and providers. These are tasks not accom-plished in a day. It takes years of preparation to build an information system worthy of a high de-gree of public confidence. One horror story can be enough to undermine years of careful preparation.

The accurate sharing of critical information among healthcare providers is particularly impor-tant in so-called “transitions of care” such as a re-ferral from a primary-care provider to a specialist or the discharge of a patient from a hospital. “Crit-ical information is required for the next provider to appropriately care for the patient,” said Dr. Holly Miller, chief medical officer at MedAllies, a Fishkill-based organization specializing in the im-plementation of medical health records, “but to-day that doesn’t always happen.” Research shows, Miller added, that patients retain about half the information given them by healthcare providers.

Early on, MedAllies has been involved with other providers and payers in building two of the foundation stones needed to safeguard and trans-mit medical records. John Finch said HAHV has participated in both.

The Connect project is a state-led effort to as-sure the electronic communication of secure re-cords. The Direct project defines protocols for sharing health information; in 2010, the Hudson Valley became one of seven pilot sites in the coun-try chosen to demonstrate the use of Direct stan-dards within health information exchanges.

Building a more closely integrated system out of a series of disconnected, fragmented parts, like the American health system is struggling to do, will take a very long time. There unfortunately is no magic wand that will allow the work to go fast-er. The evolution of a series of tools over consider-able time will eventually provide a more precise common language for American healthcare.

Medicare reimbursementMedicare last month took a shot across the bow

of America’s hospitals. It disclosed that it was giv-ing bonuses and penalties of almost a billion dol-lars tied to the quality of care provided to hospital

patients. The payments, which began this month, mark the federal government’s most extensive ef-fort to hold hospitals financially accountable for what happens to patients. Medicare said it was rewarding 1557 hospitals with more money and reducing payments to 1427 others.

The assessment used two vastly different quality standards. One dealt with whether hospitals uti-lized value-based purchasing strategies. The other was based on the ratio of hospital readmissions.

The federal program will expand each year for at least the next four years.

The payment change was created by the federal health law.

Some states fared well. Others, like New York State, came out the worst.

Harold Miller, a healthcare expert in Pittsburgh, doubted the money would be enough to change the way hospitals function. “It’s better than nothing, but it’s not what is necessary,” Miller said. “It doesn’t fix the underlying problem, which is fee for service.”

One local hospital, Northern Dutchess, received a bonus of 0.09 per cent. The other results, in de-scending order, were Benedictine Hospital (-0.27 per cent), Columbia Memorial (-0.37), St. Francis (-0.46 per cent), Vassar Brothers (-0.92 per cent), Saint Luke’s Cornwall (-1.02 per cent), Kingston Hospital (-1.22 per cent), and Orange Regional Medical Center (-1.27 per cent).

Some local hospital administrators claimed that differences in coding practices and in patient load accounted for many of the discrepancies in perfor-mance among hospitals and among states.

Health benefi t exchangeMichael A. Smith, president of the New Paltz

Area Chamber of Commerce, is a certified health-care compliance professional and a member of the governor’s recently established regional ad-visory committee for the Mid-Hudson, Capital and Northern New York region of the state health benefit exchange recently provisionally approved by the federal government.

Smith takes a business perspective. He quotes governor Andrew Cuomo in espousing the goal of health exchanges bringing true competition to the healthcare market, driving down costs by organiz-ing a competitive marketplace in which consum-ers will shop for coverage by comparing choices

on benefits, prices, service quality and costs.

Smith last month submitted a short article identifying the state’s healthcare benefit exchange as the key vehicle for ACA implementa-tion. He also recommended a gov-ernmental website (healthbenefit-exchange.ny.gov).

Here’s Smith synopsis of what he sees as the highlights of the exchange structure in New York State:

Serve as a facilitator to enroll the purchase and sale of qualified healthcare plans to small busi-nesses and individuals and enable them to receive tax credits and cost-sharing subsidies.

Small businesses with less than 25 full-time employees may be eli-gible to receive tax credits for those

having average annual wages below $50,000 and pay half the cost of their healthcare coverage.

Small businesses will have the choice to purchase insurance through the Small Business Health Op-tion Program (SHOP) Exchange or continue to buy insurance through the marketplace.

NYS will have the option to define small busi-nesses either as one to 50 employees or one to 100 full-time employees.

In 2016, all businesses having 100 or more full-time employees can buy insurance through the SHOP Exchange.

Businesses having 50 or less full-time employ-ees will be exempt from penalties; those with 51 or more full-time workers, excluding the first 30, will face fines of $2000 per employees if no healthcare insurance coverage is offered for those averaging 30 or more hours per week as of 2014.

A user fee of 3.5% will be added to premiums, through the exchange, for administrative costs.

A non-deductible 40% excise tax will be im-posed to employers who offer high value or pre-mium health benefit plans that cost more than $10,200 for single or $27,500 for family.

Individuals pay 2.9% Medicare tax on their wag-es will have another 3.8% added on investment income, including profits from home sales, for in-dividuals making more than $200,000 or married couples above $250,000. An added Medicare pay-roll tax of 0.9% on wage income above these same thresholds, starting this January.

Health insurers will be paying an annual fee to offset a portion of the cost to the insurance plan premium subsidies and tax credits starting in 2014.

Exchanges need to be financially self-sustaining by January 1, 2015.

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Regionalism as opportunityLeaders of regional non-profi ts see the virtues of exchanging views and learning to collaborate

Susan Barnett

Regionalism went a little bit

mainstream in New York two years ago, when governor Andrew Cuo-mo’s state-of-the-state message unveiled a new approach to state funding for economic development.

In this year’s state-of-the-state speech, the gover-nor proposed promoting training and innovation within colleges and encouraging collaboration among academics, private firms and investors. Cuomo announced a series of marketing plans to encourage more regional thinking, includ-ing the Taste-NY initiative to promote New York products and a $5-million advertising competi-tion for the best regional plan. He also proposed three casinos for upstate New York and a white-water rafting competition for the Adirondacks.

What is a region, anyway? What is our region? We asked Jonathan Drapkin, president and CEO

of Hudson Valley Pattern for Progress. We talked with Alan White, executive director of the Catskill Center for Conservation and Development. We contacted Melissa Everett, executive director of Sustainable Hudson Valley, a non-profit with the goal of working collaboratively to “speed up the shift to a low-carbon economy.” We solicited the views of Rik Flynn, co-founder and outgoing pres-ident of UlsterCorps, a non-profit organization that seeks to coordinate communication among social-service organizations within Ulster County. And finally we interviewed Ned Sullivan, presi-dent of Scenic Hudson.

Boundaries of a regionDrapkin heads a collaborative effort begun in

1965 by the educational and business communi-ties to explore sustainable growth for the Hudson Valley.

“How you define a region depends on the issue,” Drapkin said. “It isn’t always neatly defined. Gov-ernment boundaries, like geographic boundar-ies, can sometimes be a hindrance. If you’re talk-ing about agriculture, the Hudson Valley goes all the way past Albany to Washington County. But if you’re talking about economic development or tourism, the Hudson Valley is more centrally lo-cated. I define a region as a group of communities that share a collective vision, a commonality of in-terest on an issue.”

Drapkin admitted that the Hudson Valley has its peculiar challenges as it tries to fit itself to-gether as a region. He lives in Sullivan County, considered the Hudson Valley for economic devel-opment purposes but the Catskills for New York State tourism.

“The Tappan Zee Bridge is a good example of an asset which needs to be considered regionally,” Drapkin said. “It’s thought of as the connector for Rockland and Westchester counties. But it im-pacts the Hudson Valley, New York City, parts of New Jersey and other areas as well. It affects the movement of commuters and goods between all those areas. So any discussion of the future of the bridge needed to consider those areas as well.”

Drapkin thought that the regional approach to economic development has, overall, been work-ing. “I think it’s helping us finally understand that not every issue can be handled in our own back yard.”

Drapkin pointed out that a lot of us don’t stay in our back yard. We’re part of many communi-ties. “On any given day 35 per cent of people in the Mid-Hudson Valley get up and go to work outside their home county. And in Putnam County, that jumps to 70 percent. So we’re all impacting each other’s goods and services.”

That understanding, he said, is creating a new attitude, one that he said he has not seen be-fore. “For the first time in six years, I see coun-ties looking to make sure other members benefit from something which benefits them,” Drapkin said. “And a minority of them are saying up front that they see there’s a benefit to them, even when a project goes elsewhere. There’s a growing sense that even if we don’t get it, it could still be good for us.”

Catskill in the backgroundAlan White, of the Catskill Center for Conserva-

tion and Development, was fresh from reviewing the latest gubernatorial message. He saw some general initiatives he liked, like raising the mini-mum wage (“Who can live on $7.25 an hour?”) and the emphasis on equality for women. But he didn’t detect much that specifically benefited the Catskills.

“We’re not well represented on the regional eco-nomic development councils,” White observed. “We are, in fact, in the back yard of four councils. The Mid-Hudson region is focused on the Hud-son Valley, and there’s not much representation from the mountains.” White called the situation an artifact of artificial boundaries.

“The biggest problem for the Catskills as a re-gion is there is no common acceptance of what that means, geographically and economically. Is it the Catskill Park and New York City watershed? Is it the legislative definition, which includes six and a half counties? So the state economic devel-opment councils were drawn by economic devel-opment regions, but they didn’t see the Catskills as a distinct region with very specific issues. We’re in four councils and we’re the lowest priority on all four.”

With a million acres, a forest preserve, a ski re-sort, watershed lands and villages that are strug-gling economically, White said, the Catskills have more in common with the Adirondacks than with the other regional councils with which they’re linked. “We took some members of our board to visit the Adirondack North Country Associa-tion this past fall,” he said. “They’ve got one self-contained economic development council, and they’ve fared fairly well.”

White thought the Catskills could do a better job of self-promotion. “Right now, Delaware pro-motes itself as the Great Western Catskills. Greene County is promoting itself as the Great Northern Catskill Mountains. We’re splintering the region. We should be looking at Pennsylvania and the

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applications for state funding, White said, and it needs to get more representation. “We need to get more people on board.”

Negotiations and patienceThe breadth of the region has been a challenge

for Sustainable Hudson Valley. Executive direc-tor Melissa Everett said the wide geographical and economic diversity of the Hudson Valley, an area that, for her organization, consists of the area south of Albany and north of New York City, has always presented difficulties.

“Because of that diversity, we have never been able to accomplish as much as we wished, but we have gotten a variety of people with a deep un-derstanding of their local needs, people who are locally grounded but regionally savvy. Working regionally requires a level of back and forth — ne-gotiation and plenty of patience. You can’t impose a regional outlook. Instead, you have to draw out the opportunities, the themes all communities have in common.”

She pointed to two initiatives as examples. She said Local First, an economic development con-cept of interest to all communities, has found broad support. So has the effort to create climate change awareness, building a Climate Action Plan and the political will to act on it.

“We aren’t doing this alone,” Everett said. “There have been a couple of years to education and inspiration on Local First, with a small busi-ness network, a strategy for northern Dutchess, a regional rollout of Michael Shuman’s Going Local, showings of Independent America. Now there is a new organization, Re-Think Local, approaching the same agenda with a purely business member-ship base.”

Everett sees leadership from Albany as adding momentum. “What the governor has done with his emphasis on regionalism is to establish a ne-cessity for rapid consensus. County planning part-nerships were being passed over for federal funds because there was no effective regional govern-ing plan. Now we’re getting our collective arms around a set of common principles and metrics on which we can agree.”

Everett likens the working method to an artist’s initial sketch, a quick outline of the issue so every-one can agree on its basic composition. “Interest in regionalism is heating up with the realization that with the large and diverse number of organi-zations in the Hudson Valley it’s difficult to agree on one voice for the valley,” she said.

UlsterCorps offers a central location to learn about volunteer opportunities. It has coordinated transporting crops after local harvests to local

soup kitchens and food pantries. Its annual Ser-vice Summit invites local leaders and organiza-tions to gather and share information and oppor-tunities for collaboration.

“In spite of this particular time of economic and social hardship, there remains an abundance of re-sources in the region to address the county’s needs,” Rik Flynn said. “We all have to find new and cre-ative ways to employ these resources. There’s the inclination, I think, to sometimes feel paralyzed: where to begin or how to prioritize? The answer, I think, is to assess what we can do realistically in our own region and get to it. Smaller, defined objectives can lead to demonstrable results. Those can then be replicated and built upon.”

Dividing the environmental laborNed Sullivan said he meets regularly with the

leaders of Riverkeeper and Clearwater to discuss how they can work together to meet challenges facing the Hudson River. There’s a division of la-bor. “Riverkeeper takes the lead in enforcing laws which protect the river,” he explained. “Clearwater focuses on educating the next generation of the river’s stewards. And Scenic Hudson is preserv-ing the land that matters most, the land which protects the river. We come together when we’re addressing major threats to the river, threats like

pollution, or discharges from power plants.”Sullivan, like Drapkin a member of the gover-

nor’s Mid-Hudson economic development advi-sory council, thinks the initiative is on the right track. “They’ve done a fabulous job of identifying the region’s assets,” he said. “A national survey showed that the number-one asset of this region is its natural beauty. The regional economic devel-opment council has done a terrific job of integrat-ing business needs and values while advancing tourism and appropriate waterfront development. They recognize that the parks and the natural beauty here are assets that attract business.”

Sullivan detects that the area’s agriculture is enjoying “an explosion of interest and enthusi-asm.” Scenic Hudson has permanently protected 67 working farms in five counties and plans to do more.

But the Scenic Hudson executive has also seeing an improved recognition in New York City of the relationship between the city and the farms just up the river. “There’s this incredible breadbasket right outside New York City,” he said, “and I’m seeing a lot of people from the city now taking an interest.”

Regionalism, though an imperfect system, is getting local leaders talking to each other in new ways. And that’s something.

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Machine maker“Those guys up in Saugerties know how to build a machine like that,” paraphrases Kevin Brady

Geddy Sveikauskas

It sometimes takes a kind of person who

likes to build machines. Kevin Brady likes to build machines. Very big

machines, complex machines often contain-ing thousands of parts worth millions of dol-lars. Machines that can make very small things,

handling incredibly complex materials in almost impossibly intricate ways. Machines that require skills and competencies of which not many ma-chine-builders can boast.

“We know how to build things,” said Brady.Brady’s company, Ceres Technologies, is deeply

immersed in the nanotechnology segment of the innovation network that governor Andrew Cuo-mo outlined last Wednesday in his third state-of-the-state message. Back in September, it was announced that the state had designated Ceres, which describes itself as “a global provider state-of-the-art process equipment for the world’s lead-ing semiconductor and photovoltaic equipment suppliers,” as one of the first official suppliers of manufacturing equipment to the Photovoltaic Manufacturing Consortium (PVMC), headquar-tered at the College of Nanoscale Science and En-gineering’s (CNSE) in the Albany area.

Since then, two giant machines created and as-sembled at the Ceres plant on Kings Highway is Saugerties have been shipped up to Clifton Park and are undergoing startup tests. The two sys-tems were sold to CNSE at a price favorable to the consortium with the intention that the Ceres engineering team will be engaged with the Clif-ton Park team to advance the process efficiencies of the tools over the next two to five years, which could lead to future orders and industry relation-ships for the company.

The PVMC is a collaborative effort by semicon-ductor companies to overcome common hurdles they face in developing the technology to produce ever-smaller and more sophisticated circuitry. It is a proving ground for advanced manufacturing

and innovative technologies and Ceres does con-tract manufacturing in this industry sector. It de-signs and engineers molecular delivery systems, like ultra-high-purity specialty gas and chemi-cal-handling products, and it also has particular competences in advanced systems development such as thin-film solar photovoltaic and metrol-ogy and measurement systems. In October 2011, Ceres Technologies was awarded via the inaugural Consolidated Funding Application (CFA) process a million-dollar tax credit via the Excelsior Job Creation program managed by Empire State De-velopment Corporation. Brady commented, “The tax credit is attainable and specific to job-creation targets that must be met, and in this uncertain market we appreciate the help, but like anything it’s unpredictable.”

Brady projects that Ceres, which now has about 80 employees at its Saugerties plant plus those in two subsidiaries elsewhere (Solar Metrology on Long Island and Mega Fluid Systems in Oregon), can create 125 direct or indirect jobs, those defined as supply-chain-oriented, over the next fivers in

New York State. As a businessman in a complex and rapidly changing technological field, however, he’s uncomfortable with employment projections. One can never guarantee what will happen.

For Ceres to succeed, Brady knows, it must at-tract bright, well-educated technical specialists to work for it. But such people are offered other, often more attractive job choices. “The governor doesn’t talk about how we can’t get people to move here, that could all change with the recent activi-ties in the Capital Region,” he said.

Despite the state’s government’s recent efforts at creating a more business-friendly environment, he says, New York’s cost structure is in many cases not competitive with other places. Its regulatory structure is notoriously difficult and slow-moving. Making the optimistic rhetoric about the transfor-mation of New York State into a can-do innova-tion economy come true, Brady says bluntly, is a daunting task that will not be accomplished easily.

New York’s nanotechnology strategy”This new public-private partnership shows

how government is working with the private sec-tor to invest in our state and grow our economy,” said Cuomo back in September. “We look forward to continuing to partner with the private sector to expand nanotechnology in every region of the state.”

The state is having some success.Key to the state’s strategy has been Global

Foundries, a major manufacturer of semiconduc-tors which has invested in a widely touted plant in Saratoga County. Global Foundries announced last week it will add a two-billion-dollar research and development facility near that plant, which will be staffed by at least 500 new jobs, and will create 500 more jobs at its nearby fabrication fa-cility.

“As the industry shifts from the PC era to a market focused on mobile devices, we have seen increasingly strong interest from customers in migrating to advanced nodes on an accelerated schedule,” Global Foundries CEO Ajit Manocha explained. “To help facilitate this migration, we are making significant investments in strength-ening our technology leadership, including grow-ing our workforce and adding new capabilities to make [our fabrication plant] the hub of our global technology operations.”

The new R&D facility and a $4.4-billion con-sortium of five major international corporations will create opportunities for jobs at the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering and perhaps also for the whole sophisticated supply chain of research and manufacturing connected to it, in-cluding Ceres Technologies. “One of these guys will say, We need a machine to do x, we’ve made a computer model, and now we want to bring in these people who know how to execute things,” said Brady hopefully. “Those guys up in Saugerties know how to build a machine like that.”

The ebb and fl ow at PFTLike Precision Flow Technologies (PFT), a pre-

decessor company started by Brady, Ceres Tech-nologies has an expertise in developing systems that can produce solar cells that are more efficient and at lower cost. Ceres thinks of itself as on the interstices of the nanotechnology and solar-ener-

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gy industries. There are still a lot of unknowns in solar technology, and many unknowables about the marketplace for it. Its proponents hope that in the long term solar cells made of new materials, manufactured with new tools and equipment and utilizing new techniques of storing energy more efficiently, can make the cost of solar power more competitive.

At present only 14 per cent of energy in solar panels is converted to usable energy. If new pro-cess technology under development will bring that ratio up to 18 to 24 per cent, solar panels will become competitive.

The rise of PFT remains a cautionary tale in the annals of local economic development. According to Brady, there were two primary companies, one in the United States and the other in Germany, were competing in equipment for making light-emitting diodes (LEDs, widely used, especially in electronic devices, to emit light when a volt-age is applied to it). The state energy authority, NYSERDA, in July 2010 announced a $1.5 mil-lion grant to PFT to expand its capacity to build thin-film and LED equipment and improve its materials handling at Tech City in Ulster. Fund-ing was subject to successful agreement on a final contract. Both job creation and NYS based con-tent sourcing were the incentives that PFT had to meet in order to attain the funding, which they did in early 2011.

“This support from NYSERDA will enable Pre-cision Flow to accelerate our growth,” Brady was quoted as saying in a press release at that time. “The markets for our products are growing at breakneck speed, and New York State’s invest-ment in our growth will help ensure that we can

grow fast enough to meet the demand.”According to Brady, the American assembly,

which PFT was handling, was being done locally at that time in a competent and cost-efficient way. But serious trouble was brewing.

Most LEDs production systems were being sold to Asia, and some customers there were asking for a greater manufacturing presence in Asia. Taxes and flexibility were issues, Brady said, but not la-bor costs, technology or shipping.

“There was nothing I could do to change that,” said Brady. He negotiated an offshore presence for PFT in Singapore as their American custom-

ers, who were shipping their systems into Asia, were now being required to source systems built in Asia, not the United States. With this require-ment came a change in ownership structure and Brady and the Ceres team had an opportunity to split away from PFT and form a company focused on the other products that PFT no longer want-ed to manage. Those were essentially the legacy molecular delivery systems that PFT, now Ceres, started manufacturing in 1997. As far as the ebb and flow at PFT, at its peak, PFT employed 425 workers in Ulster County. It’s now down to be-tween 80 and 100.

The story of technology is never over, as every tested entrepreneur like Kevin Brady knows. Sure winning investments turn into losers, and some losers turn into winners again. Some sure-fire strategies fail, and some long shots succeed. As the twentieth-century economist Joseph Schumpeter realized when he coined the term “creative de-struction,” risk is an inevitable part of the nature of business. But the alternative, always avoiding risk for fear of failure, is a recipe for stagnation.

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Levels of governmentInaction, division impedes regional progress

Hugh Reynolds

The two percent property tax cap

mandated by New York State three years ago will encourage consolida-tion concepts advocated by good-government groups but resisted on the local level. “It’s a sort of

starve-the-beast mentality that could force peo-ple into decisions they might not have consid-ered otherwise,” assemblyman Kevin Cahill said.

In local education, the combination of rising built-in contractual obligations, healthcare com-mitments, declining student enrollment and eroding property values is leading to wholesale closing of elementary schools and massive staff reductions. But so far there has been only isolated talk of consolidation of school districts.

Ulster County has eight school districts with about 22,000 students, according to Ulster BOCES (the Board of Cooperative Educational Services). Kingston’s 7000 students comprise almost a third.

“Regionalism as a concept is going to be getting more airtime,” predicted BOCES superintendent Charles Khoury. He echoed Cahill’s view that the tax cap would eventually drive debate in that di-rection. BOCES provides educational services to the various districts.

As outlined in preliminary discussions and based on models of county school districts in oth-er parts of the country, Ulster could have as few as four regional high schools, with current school

districts retaining administration through the eighth grade. There would, of course, be consider-able initial capital construction costs and ongoing transportation issues in such an organizational change. The state has been on record as being willing to support these efforts toward consolida-tion.

Gerald Benjamin, a professor at SUNY New Paltz and author of a widely respected book on regionalism some 20 years ago, said that locali-ties will not easily give up autonomy. “What often might make sense on one level can mean some-thing entirely different on another,” he said. “Take regional development in the seven-county area the state has designated. It might be more feasible to put five projects in, say, Dutchess County, but that won’t fly.”

It sometimes does fly. The recent state alloca-tions to each of the ten statewide regional eco-nomic development regions have been of a similar magnitude irrespective of their population. And within regions per-capita project funds allocated to some counties have been more numerous and larger than those allocated to other counties.

Landfi lls and jailsClear definition of political boundaries is a fac-

tor in advancing regionalism. The Hudson Valley doesn’t boast that kind of clarity. Each of the vari-ous state departments has its own administrative clustering of counties within a region.

Intermunicipal agreements, such as the one be-tween Dutchess and Ulster counties to swap “con-flict attorneys,” are sometimes a more common mechanism for sharing services and reducing costs than groups of counties setting up a region-al structure. But there are examples of multi-county sharing for such things as transportation programs and housing studies. Efforts to reach county executives in Ulster and Dutchess for their views on regionalism were unsuccessful.

The SUNY-based regional think tank Benjamin heads in New Paltz called the Center for Research, Regional Education and Outreach (CRREO) has identified several areas where a regional approach could work — regional jails and regional landfills being but two sectors. Ulster County planning di-rector Dennis Doyle noted that every county in the region exports its garbage.

Congressman Chris Gibson mentioned the con-

flict involved in getting natural competitors to co-operate for the greater good. They don’t cooperate in Washington. In the end, “the refusal to resolve issues reinforces the status quo,” he said.

Previous attemptsThe region has rarely spoken with one voice

on the state legislative level. Though dozens of state legislators represent the seven counties of the Mid-Hudson regional area, they don’t aggre-gate their clout the way politicos clustered around central cities do. By and large, they tend to limit their activities to state issues in Albany and those arising in their respective districts. This absence of common approach speaks to a peculiar paro-chialism.

Cahill said he’d like to reorient the office he has held for almost 20 years toward a more regional approach. Shortly after the first of the year, he convened a luncheon with regional leaders in edu-cation, business, healthcare and finance to explore common issues and approaches.

Mid-Hudson Pattern for Progress, the regional planning and policy entity, has been preaching regionalism for decades. Repeated efforts to con-nect to a spokesperson there were unsuccessful.

Former congressman Maurice Hinchey of Sau-gerties helped establish a federal designation of the Hudson Valley heritage region almost two decades ago. Other than some signage and a web site, its impact after 18 years has been limited. The Hudson Valley Greenway, another Hinchey initia-tive in cooperation with Steve Saland, has been successful in promoting environmental responsi-bility through grants and advocacy.

One stop shoppingDefining a region is sometimes in the eye of the

beholder. From the town level, the county repre-sents a region. For county officials, clusters of ad-jacent counties seem the logical building blocks. Traditionally, the mid-Hudson has been centered in Dutchess, Orange and Ulster counties, some-times buttressed by a few adjacent counties. The Catskills, anchored by Ulster, Greene, Sullivan and Delaware counties, often see themselves as a region. For purposes of marketing, Ulster has long advertised itself as the place where the Catskills and the Hudson meet.

The recently formed Mid-Hudson Regional Ad-visory Development Council approaches region-alism from what a spokesman called the ground level. “We’ve stressed very hard the public par-ticipation part of it,” council spokesman Jason Conwall. In theory, the council will act as a one-stop shopping center for the myriad of state pro-grams available to localities, schools and business. “We’ve turned the process on its head from when Albany made the decisions,” the spokesman said.

In its goal to coordinate competition within a region, the council structure creates competition for limited state resources among regions.

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