Even Billionaires Get Welfare In New York State!

Dinosaur BBQ is a small chain of very good Bar B Q restaurants with locations in Rochester, Syracuse and New York City. The city of Troy, NY has an empty restaurant on their waterfront and when Dinosaur expressed interest in opening a location there, Mayor Harry Tutunjian couldn't have been more excited.  (Of course, anyone that knows Harry, knows that he doesn't miss too many meals.)

So the game began.  Dinosaur started with the "OK, what can you do for us?" game looking for state handouts to get the business going.  They weren't looking for just tax breaks either.  They wanted cold, hard cash!  The haggling went on for a little while and finally Dinosaur got a sweet deal.

1) $375,000 to renovate the restaurant.

2) $53,000 waiver on mortgage filing tax

3) $60,000 sales tax waiver on building materials.

When you add that up, you get nearly a half million dollars in incentives.

Here's where I have a problem with this.  Dinosaur Bar B Q is owned by George Soros.  Yep, THE George Soros aka multi-billionaire George Soros.  I can understand giving some  incentives in the way of tax cuts and forebearances as a way to promote revitalization and economic growth but giving a BILLIONAIRE a half million dollars in cash to establish a business that will likely be extremely profitable amounts to corporate welfare and nothing more.

We're getting used to say this:

ONLY IN NEW YORK!