Governor Andrew M. Cuomo recently announced a $30 million investment to develop a 50-mile flight traffic management system between Syracuse and Griffiss International Airport in Rome to advance the burgeoning Unmanned Aircraft Systems industry in Central New York. Within the 50-mile corridor, strategic investments will accelerate industry growth by supporting emerging uses of Unmanned Aircraft Systems in key Central New York industries, including agriculture and forest management, transportation and logistics, media and film development, utilities and infrastructure, and public safety. More information is available here.

VIDEO of the Governor's remarks is available on YouTube here and in TV quality (h264, mp4) format here.

AUDIO of the Governor’s remarks is available here.

PHOTOS of the event will be available on the Governor’s Flickr page.

A rush transcript of the Governor’s remarks is available below:

Thank you. Thank you very much. It’s a pleasure to be with all of you today. Welcome to the great state of New York. We are so pleased that the UTM conference is here, and so many people from NASA, FAA, and from places all around the country – welcome, welcome, welcome. I’m actually not here as the Governor of the state of New York, I’m actually here for my skills in design and operation of drones. I am the 2012 Competitive Drone Management winner, I’ve won the 2014 Drone Design Competition. Okay, none of that is true. I am here because I want you, and this industry, located in Central New York. That doesn’t just happen by chance, it happens now because government works with the private sector to actually make it happen.

For those of you not from New York that has always been the story of New York State. It was about public-private sector partnerships before they called them public-private partnerships. State government in New York was a very aggressive entrepreneurial government that actually created the template and the platform for the private sector to do well. You’re in Syracuse, New York, Syracuse is Syracuse; Albany, Buffalo, Rochester, are Albany, Buffalo, Rochester; because this state in 1817 knew the next big question for the country was how you were going to get goods to the ‘West’, which was really the middle part of the country at that time. That was the big private sector question, not a government question. Whoever could transport goods to the ‘West’ that company was going to win, and the government in New York at the time said, “We have a great plan, we know how to get to the ‘West’. You come in from the Atlantic Ocean, you get to New York City, there’s the Hudson River, you come up the Hudson River, you make a left at Albany, and you come out in Buffalo, and you’re in the Great Lakes. Once you’re in the Great Lakes you can go down any number of rivers and get to wherever you want to go.” They said, “One question Governor, when you make the left at Albany, how do the ships come out in Buffalo? It’s all land between Albany and Buffalo.” The governor said, “No problem, we will dig a canal from Albany to Buffalo”. This is 1817, no hydraulics, no sophisticated engineering. New York built the Erie Canal, from Albany to Buffalo. It was an act of perceived madness at the time, but it was that investment that opened up that canal. The goods came in through the New York City harbor, up the Hudson River, came through the Erie Canal, opened up access to the West, expedited the development of the entire country, let alone the state of New York. You then have that transportation, that infrastructure, and companies came and innovation came. And that’s why IBM starts in New York, Xerox in New York, Kodak in New York, Bausch and Lomb in New York, Lockheed Martin in New York.

We become the center for innovation. Today’s economy is that on steroids, because today’s economy is no longer a manufacturing economy, right? We do not make things anymore. We got out of that business. We sent that overseas because labor was cheaper overseas and we said, “Well, we’re going to have the innovation economy. That’s our niche internationally.” Fine. The innovation economy is different. It does not grow spontaneously. It grows in clusters, and it grows in synergistic clusters where there is a concentration of companies, material and research in that area, right? Silicon Valley is Silicon Valley for a reason. It was a concentration of that talent pool. Originally the Research Triangle in North Carolina because it was a concentration of that talent in that pool. Albany, New York is the nanotech capital of the world. Why? Because we developed over a number of years the sophistication and the best companies and equipment in nanotechnology. Buffalo, New York, the other end of the state, we are working to become the medical research genome capital. Why? Because we’re developing the key institutions, the key players, the key talents.

As Howard said, Central New York, we believe can be the capital for Unmanned Aircraft. Why? We have a couple of advantages to begin with. We start with a cluster. Griffiss Air Force Base is a tremendous asset, one of six in the nation that is already licensed. Lockheed Martin gave us a workforce with a lot of people with a lot of talent, and we are already developing companies that have been in that space. We want to accelerate that, and we want to use every resource we can to attract more companies, more talent in that area and bring them to Central New York. To that end, we are partnering with a private sector group called New Air, which is an alliance of 100 companies in this space. We are going to invest $30 million of government money with that alliance to build a 50 mile air strip between Syracuse and Griffiss. It would then be, we believe, the most sophisticated testing area in the country. You wouldn’t have line of sight issues, all of the clearances would be done, there would be special landing strips, it would be designed specifically for this purpose. We believe we can have it up and operational in 2018.

Again, to what end? To help stimulate the growth of this economy, and that is what Central New York is about. As far as New York State in general, New York State is not what a lot of business people believed about New York. Our reputation precedes us in many ways and our reputation when it comes to business was not especially flattering. You say New York and people say, “You have high taxes, high regulations.” That’s the old New York. We understand that that was not the way to go. You look at New York over the past six years. It was a much, much different state. State taxes are driven because the state spends a lot of money, right? It’s your household budget, it’s your business budget, or some multiple thereof. But this state spent too much money. This state spent more money than the rate of inflation for over 50 years. This state spent more money than the people in the state were earning. That’s a trick.

We did have high taxes. We reversed that. We brought down the state spending rate. Our state spending rate is now 1.4 percent more per year. That is the lowest rate since they have been keeping books in the state of New York. We brought taxes down all across the board. Every tax rate has been lowered in the state of New York. The manufacturing tax rate is as low as it was in 1917, which is zero. The median income tax is down to its lowest level since 1968, so taxes are way, way down. We even have a program called START-UP NY where a start-up business that locates in the state of New York gets no taxes for ten years. No taxes for ten years.

I get tired of people saying to me, “Well, you know I can go to this state, or this state and they have no income tax.” Fine. If that’s what it takes, we have a program that does the exact same thing – no income tax. We also will invest in companies with debt or equity. That is the business that Howard Zemsky is in. For us, it’s very simple. It’s about bringing jobs to the state of New York. In this case, it’s about bringing jobs in this industry to Central New York. We believe in the potential of this industry. We believe the number of applications are virtually unlimited and we believe that this is the future. We are willing to put our money where our mouth is as we say. $30 million invested – we think this is going to be a $1 trillion industry and we invite you to come and grow with us in this $1 trillion industry together. Thank you for being here.