Politics

Regional Councils

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.

Live-stream: Regional council awards ceremony

WXXI News | By Zack Seward

Published December 8, 2011 at 9:47 AM EST

So who's it gonna be?

With $200 million in state economic development funds on the line, that's the big question.

Four regions will walk away with $40 million each. Six regions will have to split the remaining $40 million.

We'll soon find out who wins and who loses.

The awards ceremony kicks off at 10 a.m. Watch it unfold live and follow @MarieCusick and @kdewitt7 for the latest play-by-play from the Albany Egg.

Update (11:33 a.m.)

The awards ceremony just wrapped up. Here's how it panned out.

The "Best Plan" winners are:

Western New York - $100.3 million
Central New York - $103.7 million
North Country - $103.2 million
Long Island - $101.6 million

And the runners up:

Mohawk Valley - $60.2 million
Capital Region - $62.7 million
Mid-Hudson - $67 million
Southern Tier - $49.4 million
Finger Lakes - $68.8 million
New York City - $66.2 million

So, the "Best Plan" winners are taking home a total of $408.8 million.

The runners up are getting a total of $374.3 million.

That adds up to a grand total of $783.1 million.

It's unclear where that money is coming from. Presumably, the totals account for incentives pulled from the much larger, $800 million pot of existing incentives that were also involved in the regional council framework.

We'll have more on this story later today.