New York’s Empire State Development Corporation is beginning a search for a new CEO, and as the CEA’s John Mozena writes in the Albany Times-Union, it’s “an opportunity for New York to end its participation in the nationwide economic development race to the bottom.”
Obviously, simply putting a more forward-looking individual in the CEO’s chair at ESDC won’t revolutionize New York’s economic development model overnight. There’s a massive amount of inertia and far too many politicians, bureaucrats, powerful developers and big corporations who benefit from the status quo — as New Jersey’s parade of sordid revelations from its economic development programs demonstrates all too well. But without new leadership and a new mindset, New York will be stuck competing for the jobs that built the past, instead of luring the people who will build the future.