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Governor Andrew Cuomo announced early in his term that he'd be creating a set of "regional economic councils" to build plans for funding economic development across New York, from the ground up.In the summer of 2011 he finally announced some of the details of the program, to be led by Lieutenant Governor Robert Duffy. The ten councils each have dozens of members, and are charged with gathering input from the public and business leaders, and creating a plan by November 14. Those plans will be pitted against each other for a pot of $1 billion in grants, incentives, and tax relief from various state agencies. The winners will get more funding, the losers will get less.But other details - like whether funding will be available past the initial term, and who will serve on the board that decides who wins and who loses - have not been released.The Innovation Trail is looking for your feedback about what your regional economic priorities are, and what you want your community to look like once the councils have completed their task.

How the regional council award money adds up

Everyone's a winner.

That was the takeaway from Governor Cuomo's regional economic development council award ceremony this morning.

While everyone took home more than the expected $40 million, four regions took home more than $100 million each. The biggest winners were Central New York, Western New York, the North Country and Long Island.

Click through for a project-by-project breakdown of the $785 million that was awarded in Albany today.

Here's how each region fared.

The "Best Plan" winners are:

  1. Western New York - $100.3 million
  2. Central New York - $103.7 million
  3. North Country - $103.2 million
  4. Long Island - $101.6 million

The runners up are:

  1. Mohawk Valley -  $60.2 million
  2. Capital Region - $62.7 million
  3. Mid-Hudson - $67 million
  4. Southern Tier - $49.4 million
  5. Finger Lakes - $68.8 million
  6. New York City - $66.2 million
WXXI/Finger Lakes reporter for the Innovation Trail.
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