Will Micron's Fab 8 Go The Way of SolarCity?

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Despite the support of Andrew Cuomo when he was New York governor and enormous taxpayer subsidies, the SolarCity plant in Buffalo turned into a multi-billion dollar fiasco. Taxpayers are hoping that the centerpiece of the current governor’s economic plan won’t be a similar mistake.

Committing $5.5 billion in state money, Gov. Kathy Hochul is rolling out the red carpet for a $100 billion Micron Fab 8 chip-manufacturing project in Clay, NY. The massive project will also draw from the $52 billion CHIPS and Science Act of

2022, a federal fund pushed through by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY).

The senator directly courted Micron when he was writing the bill to bring jobs and economic development to an upstate region which, like many in the Rust Belt areas of the United States, saw their manufacturing base pilfered through trade deals with China, Mexico and other foreign nations. The communist country may still stymie U.S. workers yet as it recently announced a ban on sales of the rare earth metals vital to the computer industry.

“In building and equipping the Tesla solar-panel plant, the state became a direct investor in that project under the worst possible terms,” said E.J. McMahon with the Empire Center for Public Policy in assessing Cuomo’s Buffalo deal. “In terms of sheer direct cost to taxpayers, this may rank as the single biggest economic development boondoggle in American history.”

With Hochul moving full steam ahead with taxpayer dollars for Fab 8, Empire State residents, already among the highest taxed in the nation, are veering a skeptical eye toward the latest giveaway coming out of the governor’s mansion.