By ADAM SICHKO
asichko@bizjournals.com | 518-640-6818

Kenneth Adams has a new job as pitchman for the state's economic development efforts - but key questions remain about just what he's selling.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo tapped him Jan. 27 to serve as president and CEO of Empire State Development Corp.

The state agency is charged with helping companies create jobs and boosting the state's private sector. Cuomo has put a premium on those efforts to help the state shake the recession's impact.

The new role puts Adams in charge of promoting business tax credits he decried as too meager when he was head of The Business Council of New York State Inc. And he'll also play a role in regional councils that Cuomo wants to create to oversee economic development - groups whose powers and scope remain unclear.

"I truly believe Ken was the best possible choice. But there's quite a few yet-to-be-determined answers. There's not a lot of definition," said Brian McMahon, who heads the New York State Economic Development Council. The group represents local economic developers.

To start, Cuomo's team continues to re-draw how the agency is organized, to give it more of a regional focus.

Former Gov. Eliot Spitzer split the agency into Upstate and downstate wings. His successor, Gov. David Paterson, tried to undo that, but the structure grew muddled as people left the administration.

Cuomo wants 10 regional councils to coordinate development in the state and compete for $200 million in funds.

Lt. Gov. Robert Duffy will chair the councils. Little else is clear beyond that.

Questions linger over who will run the councils and if they'll have the power to issue bonds or award tax breaks.

Even their geographic boundaries remain in doubt, although Cuomo gave a glimpse of those plans this week as he rolled out his budget.

He flashed a map on a projector screen that seemed to show Albany, Schenectady and Rensselaer counties as part of one group, with Saratoga County lumped in with the North Country.

Tax credits are another question.

Last year, the state cut off access to its once-signature business tax credits called Empire Zone benefits. The state created a more austere program, called Excelsior Jobs, in its wake.

Cuomo wants the Excelsior benefits to last 10 years, twice as long as they do now, and also do more to lower a company's property tax bills.

Adams will be a key voice in that argument, but it remains to be seen whether legislators will back the changes.

Three dozen companies have applied for Excelsior benefits since they started five months ago. Of that, 11 firms have accepted tax credits; none is in this area.

"It hasn't been a program with a track record. Frankly, companies want predictability, and a lot of them took the wait-and-see approach," said Robert Pasinella, president of the Rensselaer County Industrial Development Agency. "Now we're starting to get more definition."

Cuomo, for his part, has pledged to spend more of his own time on economic development than any other area. Before taking office, he sent Duffy to Nebraska to try to recruit a company to move to New York.

This story originally appeared in The Business Review of Albany.