The From the Lobby podcast features a behind-the-scenes look at politics and government from New York State to Washington, DC with Jack O’Donnell, an Albany insider and Managing Partner of O’Donnell and Associates, a top lobbying firm that helps clients all over the country cut through government red tape.
Don’t be stuck on the sidelines. Get a front-row seat to what’s happening in politics with Jack! From the issues that affect taxpayers and business owners to the history of the budget process in New York, Jack has the knowledge and depth of experience to cut through the rhetoric and tell you what’s really going on.
Summary of this Episode
Guests
- Grant Loomis: Senior Vice President of the Buffalo Niagara Partnership
- Alec Lewis: Vice President and Director of Campaigns at O’Donnell and Associates
- Joanne Pasceri: Director of Communications at O’Donnell and Associates
Major Topics Covered
• Grant Loomis discusses the Buffalo Niagara Partnership’s role in advocacy and economic development for Western New York.
• The importance of the US-Canada border crossing to the region’s economy is highlighted, including trade, tourism, and supply chain integration.
• New York State’s energy policies and transition to renewables are identified as a key concern for businesses and reliability.
• The “benefits cliff” issue is explained, where low-income individuals can lose benefits when their income increases slightly, creating disincentives for career advancement.
Full Transcript of the Episode
Note: This is a generated transcript. Please excuse any typos.
Joanna Pasceri 00:06
Hi, everyone, and thanks for joining us from the lobby with Jack O’Donnell. A podcast that gives listeners an inside look at government and politics with Jack, managing partner of O’Donnell and Associates, a Top New York lobbying firm that’s helping businesses all over the map reach their goals. I’m Joanna Pasceri, Director of Communications at O’Donnell and Associates. We are continuing our series “Profiling New York’s Business Community” with the newest member of our team, Alec Lewis, Vice President and Director of Campaigns. Alec has his finger on the pulse of every region in New York, and keeps a close eye on the business landscape to help create winning strategies for our clients. In this episode, Alec is tapping into the expertise of Grant Loomis, Senior Vice President of the Buffalo Niagara partnership. O’Donnell and Associates is a proud member of the partnership and supports its unique role in New York State advocating for the needs and concerns of Buffalo and the western New York community. Hi Alec and Grant and welcome to the podcast.
Alec Lewis 01:14
Hi,Joanna. It’s great to be with you. And grant. Welcome. It’s great to have you from the lobby.
Grant Loomis 01:18
Thanks for having me, thrilled to be here.
Alec Lewis 01:19
Grant, you’ve had an impressive career in government and in the private sector. And as background for our listeners, you actually got your start as a TV news reporter, followed by various positions in county, state, and federal government. Now, since 2015 you’ve been a Vice President with the Buffalo Niagara partnership, and were recently promoted to Senior Vice President. Can you explain for our listeners, what you actually do in your current role, and what’s the role of the partnership and shaping government policy and economic development activity in Western New York?
Grant Loomis 01:49
Sure. Well, in my role, I oversee the advocacy workforce and economic development initiatives of the partnership. And that work is really at the heart of what makes the BNP, the BNP, which is the Regional Chamber of Commerce here in Western New York. And advocacy, in particular, has been a core tenant of the BMPs portfolio for decades. And we advocate at the federal, state, and local level, with the majority of our focus really being on New York State, because of the way as you know, state government impacts the tax and regulatory environment that employers have to navigate every day. So we tend to spend the majority of our time focused on on Albany. And we take the pulse of our membership every year to gauge their biggest pain points, their obstacles to growth, and that feedback we get directly informs the policy priorities that we articulate in our annual advocacy agenda. And that document is really a roadmap for our advocacy activity for the year. Many times, members identify issues that they think the partnership should be weighing in on. And you know, we do our homework on those issues, and we talk to other member companies in that same sector to arrive at consensus around a position. But much more frequently, the BNP and the GA team specifically watches key issues closely and brings those issues to the attention of our members, updating them, alerting them to the potential impacts good or bad on their operations, and in some cases, how they can weigh in as regional employers and make their voice heard, above and beyond whatever advocacy the partnership is doing. We also meet with our members in nine separate sector meetings each year in an initiative we call Industry Leaders Forum. And these meetings are really invaluable in helping us bring issues to the attention of our members, but more importantly, they provide us with a great intelligence as to what these industry leaders are facing day in and day out so that we can best talk to policymakers and government leaders about ways that employers and lawmakers can work together, and I would underline together, to make our community and all of New York State really a more competitive environment and create more economic opportunity in our community. But I would add that, while our work is certainly specific to the needs of our members, it’s it’s bigger than that. And I think, more than any other time in the history of the partnership, our work is really reflective of what our region needs, and the role that employers can play, really must play, in helping to address regional challenges and take advantage of regional opportunities and there is clearly a very intentional equity focus to that work of late you because we have to make sure that collectively we are creating economic mobility across our community, because for far too long, too many people have been left behind. And it’s not only had obviously negative consequences for those people directly impacted, but there is an economic impact, and it directly relates to the workforce and tax base in our community.
Alec Lewis 05:27
Well let me ask you about a specific issue now that got some national attention in recent days. So during Thanksgiving week, the western New York region received national attention, as you well know, from the Rainbow Bridge vehicle explosion. Now there were fears at one point that it could have been a terrorist incident. But investigators thankfully have determined that the dramatic explosion was due to an unfortunate car accident. This incident, of course, really drew attention to the US Canadian border crossing. Can you help our listeners outside western New York especially better understand how important the border crossing is to not only Western New York, but New York state as a whole and why it’s been such a focus of the partnerships advocacy efforts?
Grant Loomis 06:09
Sure. We truly are a cross border community. And at the risk of sounding like Sarah Palin, circa 2008. When I look out my office window, I can see Canada, so we are geographically linked. And as a result, our economies are linked. And that linkage materializes in various ways. One of the key ways is that our manufacturing sectors are connected, supply chains are incredibly integrated. So it’s not uncommon for a product as it’s being manufactured to be shipped across the border multiple times. Along with others, the partnership was very opposed, as example, to the steel and aluminum tariffs that the former Trump administration imposed as leverage during the US MCA or the new NAFTA negotiation several years ago, because of the real economic impact it was having on our economy because of how integrated our economy is to Canada. Canada is New York State’s number one trading partner, and people either don’t know that or forget it. The state exports $15 billion worth of goods to Canada annually, and that’s more than any foreign nation does. And last I checked, there were approximately 700,000 jobs in New York State that depend on trade and investment with Canada. But that relationship is more than just traditional industry or traditional commerce. It really is essential to the health of our tourism sector in Western New York. Tourism is a major driver of our regional economy and Canadian visitors are critical to that. Business from Canadian visitors brings hundreds of millions of dollars into western New York each year. And sometimes we take our cross border economy for granted. But that certainly changed with COVID-19 when the border was shut down to non-essential travel for months. And as you know, when things reopened, it was still a very difficult situation to navigate because Canada and the US were mandating for a long period of time, different travel and crossing protocols related to testing, etc. So it made the job of crossing complicated to say the least. And our economy took a major hit from all of that activity, and it’s still in the process of recovering from it. When you look especially on the tourism and visitor level. Canadian visitors to Erie County are 25% below currently pre pandemic levels. That’s significant. The process of crossing has mostly normalized now, thankfully, but there are still issues that need to be addressed. Most acutely, this summer we saw very long car traffic delays entering the US, not truck or commercial traffic, but car traffic. And the reason is insufficient Customs and Border Patrol staffing. We know that if you compare 2019 pre pandemic to 2023 traffic volume at the Peace Bridge declined by 21%, but border wait times increased by 52%. That tells you we have a real problem that needs to be addressed by the federal government as it relates to Customs and Border Patrol staffing, because when a Canadian traveler has to wait an hour for an hour and a half, or sometimes longer to cross into the US, they’re going to think twice about doing that again. And when someone experiences that multiple times, that travel pattern of frequent crossings are not thinking twice about coming here to shop or see a show or attend to Savers game or a Bills game, that pattern gets broken. And it’s very hard to recover. And as a result, we lose out on very precious tax revenue.
Alec Lewis 10:16
So as we record this, December is upon us, winter is coming, and that also means the 2024 legislative session is right around the corner in Albany. So what issues are top of mind going into 2024 for the partnership, that you are looking for the governor and the legislature to address?
Grant Loomis 10:35
Well, Alec, as you would expect, there are there are many, but I think I’ll highlight two, I would first say energy policy. New York State has made some sweeping changes to the state’s energy policy over the last two years and those changes, will have, are having, some very profound impacts on our economy. And there are, I think, from very objective observers, still some very legitimate questions that remain unanswered as to how New York State is going to ensure reliable and affordable energy moving forward while implementing these changes, which basically center around a full electrification of our economy. And I want to be very clear, before I go further on this topic, that raising questions about the state’s energy policy does not make one a climate denier. Climate change is real, and business and government and all stakeholders have an obligation to be good stewards of the environment. But, we can do that without turning our economy upside down. And this policy or these policies that Albany is adopting, at a rather fast clip here, continue to move rapidly down the track, while state leaders appear to, frankly either be ignoring or be indifferent to the mounting warning signs. Just yesterday, the New York independent system operator which is the entity as you know, responsible for managing the state’s electric grid, put out yet another warning, saying there were growing risks to the electric system reliability, because there is increased demand due to electrification, but that generating capacity is decreasing. State leaders want to pretend otherwise, but it’s a fact that 70% of the state’s electric generating capacity comes from oil and gas, and that can’t be replaced overnight. Yet, we are banning these fuel sources and decommissioning generating facilities at a rate that would lead you to believe that New York State can flip a switch and power everything through renewables. And that’s just not reality. It’s not reality today, and it’s probably not going to be reality for some time to come. And again, that doesn’t mean that the partnership doesn’t support renewable energy development. We have renewable energy companies as members. We’re simply pointing out that there needs to be a much more transparent conversation about how we’re going to get there and what their real impacts financial and otherwise are going to be on New Yorkers, specifically ratepayers. New York leaders need to be honest with ratepayers about the reality of the situation, and they need to be honest about what it’s going to cost to power everything through renewables, and they need to explain how we ensure reliable energy during the transition. I, by no means, am hoping for another Buffalo holiday blizzard like we had last year but God forbid if we get one, I’m sure going to be glad that I heat my house with natural gas. As far as other issues, I’ll just tackle one and I would say the benefits cliff. So for a listener who may not know, the benefits cliff is when someone on social support, loses benefits because their income increases. And you might say, Well, isn’t that the point? But in reality, the income can increase by as little as $1. And that person could lose a benefit or several benefits, we’re talking housing subsidy, childcare subsidy, nutrition assistance, vital supports, they could lose that benefit in its entirety. And even if that income increases sizable, like income going up because of a new job or promotion, it is often not enough in the short term to equate or exceed the monetary value of the benefit being lost. So as a result, the person is in worse financial shape for taking the promotion or taking the additional hours or taking the new job because they’re losing all their benefits, even though they’re income increased. And so in many cases, we are asking low income people, and there are many low income people in this state, there are many low income people in Western New York, we are asking them to make a very unfair choice, advance your career, or do what’s best for your family in the here and now. And as you would suspect most of these folks are making very rational decisions and doing what’s best in the here and now. But when that happens, employers lose out on being able to promote or recruit or grow somebody within their organization, simply accelerating existing talent challenges, those employees or those folks on benefits lose the opportunity to advance in their career, and certainly set themselves up to be much stronger financially in the long term, and everyone is impacted because our entire community loses out on the tax dollars that that person would be contributing to the economy over, you know, the course of their working years. There are things employers and career counselors can do to help people work around or avoid the cliff altogether. And we’re very engaged at work, we’re committed to that work, we have worked with the Atlanta Federal Reserve to develop a benefits-cliff calculator as a tool that people can use to determine someone’s cliff point, although most people receiving benefits know exactly where their cliff point is, and they work very hard not to go over it. But the calculator can really help employers better understand the situation, rethink their compensation policies, in some cases, so that you’re not in an attempt to reward an employee actually making them worse off financially. The calculator is also useful to help career counselors identify career paths based on people’s interest that will help them move around the cliff more readily. But what we really need on this issue urgently is policy reform, we need to turn the benefits cliff into a benefit slope, where someone’s benefit levels go down gradually as their income goes up. And this requires heavy lifting by policymakers. And it’s extra complicated, as you can imagine, because it involves the federal government, involves the state government, and to a lesser degree, it involves a local government, that’s actually deploying those benefits in terms of getting them out on the street to the people who qualify. But there is a bill in the New York State Legislature sponsored by Senator Prasad that the BNP has championed for the last several years. The intent of the bill is to extend someone’s benefits by six months if they complete a New York State certified training program and receive a job or promotion as a result. This is by no means a panacea to the overall issue, but it is certainly a really good start. And this bill has passed the Senate before, we need to get more buy in from the assembly. And we need to get this measure to the governor’s desk, and I’m hopeful that 2024 will be the year that we do just that.
Alec Lewis 18:19
Well 2024 is full of hopefully exciting possibilities for what the legislature can do to make good and positive changes for New Yorkers. I know the Buffalo Niagara partnership will be hard at work for the region and O’Donnell and Associates will certainly be hard at work for our clients. But Grant, thank you so much for joining us today from the lobby.
Joanna Pasceri 18:39
Thank you Alec and Grant for some great insight on the economic and policy concerns for Buffalo and the western New York Business Community. You can stay updated with all the Buffalo Niagara partnership activities at thepartnership.org and stay up on what’s happening in state and federal politics. Sign up for our Monday morning memo sent right to your inbox each week. Subscribe on our website at odonnellsolutions.com. That’s odonnellsolutions.com. And for daily updates, follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and threads at O’Donnell and Associates. Thanks for listening, everyone. We’ll be back from the lobby with Jack O’Donnell.
