Part 1: What Is the IDA, What Are PILOTs — and Why Should You Care?

Part 2: Why Mount Vernon is Different – and Why That Matters

Part 3: Campaign Money, Conflicts, and the Machine That Runs Mount Vernon’s IDA

Part 4: A Way Forward — Oversight, Reform, and Real Accountability

The Problem Is Systemic: The Solution Must Be Too

Over the course of this series, we have documented a system that is profitable for a few and deeply corrosive for everyone else. The Mount Vernon IDA has given away $44.4 million in tax revenue over ten years: $26.7 million from schools, $13.3 million from the city, and $4.4 million from the county.

In return, Mount Vernon received low-income housing developments that generate minimal tax revenue, create no permanent jobs, and impose long-term service costs that residents and businesses outside the PILOT agreements must absorb.

We showed that the IDA’s governance is the weakest of any comparable agency in the state (Part 2). That its portfolio has been captured by residential housing rather than the industrial and commercial development it was created to promote (Part 2). That its oversight is functionally absent (projects go unchecked, PILOT payments go uncollected, state reporting goes unfiled, Parts 1 and 2). And that the political ecosystem sustaining it (campaign contributions flowing between developers and the politicians who control the IDA) ensures that internal reform is extremely unlikely (Part 3).

The question now is simple: What can actually be done?

The answer involves three interconnected strategies: state legislation that changes the rules, a proven oversight model that can be replicated, and sustained community engagement that refuses to accept the status quo.

None of these alone is sufficient. Together, they can restore accountability.

Why Local Reform Isn’t Enough

Let’s be clear about why hoping for reform from within the Mount Vernon IDA is not a strategy. The agency’s structure creates what the government watchdog group Reinvent Albany has called a “perverse incentive.” The IDA earns administrative fees from approving deals. It does not earn fees from rejecting them. The board members are appointed by the mayor with no confirmation process, no term limits, and no mandatory qualifications. The chair is the mayor herself. The agency has every financial and political reason to say yes to developers, and no structural reason to say no.

This is not a personnel problem. It is an architectural one. You could replace every person on the board tomorrow and the outcomes would likely be the same, because the incentives haven’t changed. The board exists to approve deals. That’s what it does. That’s what it will continue to do unless the rules are changed from outside.

A decade ago, the New York State Comptroller audited the Mount Vernon IDA and issued recommendations for improvement. Those recommendations were largely ignored. The same problems the Comptroller identified (weak documentation, missing records, uncollected payments, unverified job claims) persist today.

The Mount Vernon school board, to its credit, passed a resolution in 2025 affirming that “only a duly elected school board should have the authority to abate school tax revenues.” That resolution was important. It established a principle: the people responsible for educating children should have a say in whether their funding is given away.

Melinda Person, President of the New York State United Teachers (NYSUT), put it simply: “Every community deserves both affordable housing and well-funded public schools, not one at the expense of the other.”

But the school board’s resolution, however principled, has no legal force. Without state law, it is a letter asking the IDA to behave differently. And the IDA has shown, repeatedly, that it is not inclined to behave differently on its own.

State Legislation That Could Change Everything

The good news is that New York’s legislature has recognized the problem. Several bills are moving through Albany that could fundamentally alter the IDA landscape, not just in Mount Vernon, but statewide.

One bill, sponsored by Sen. Shelley B. Mayer, would give county comptrollers the authority to audit IDA projects. Right now, IDAs in much of the state operate without any meaningful local audit authority looking over their shoulder. The bill has passed the state Senate unanimously twice, which signals broad recognition that IDAs need outside eyes. It now needs to move through the Assembly.

A second bill from Sen. Mayer would change the composition of IDA boards. Every IDA would have to include at least one local labor representative and either a school district superintendent or a school board representative. A version of this bill passed the Senate last year but stalled in the Assembly. It’s back this session in amended form.

If that bill becomes law, the Mount Vernon IDA’s four-member, mayor-controlled board would have to expand to include voices from labor and the school district. For the first time, the body that votes on tax giveaways affecting school revenue would include people accountable to the workers and educators most directly affected by those decisions.

A third bill, sponsored by Assemblymember Solages, would create a public, searchable database of all IDA subsidies across New York State. Right now, IDA data is scattered across individual agency websites and local records, when it’s reported at all. There is no single place where a resident, journalist, or researcher can look up how much their IDA has given away, to whom, and whether the promised benefits materialized. Transparency is the baseline. Without it, accountability is impossible.

A fourth bill, from Sen. Jeremy Cooney, would address how PILOT properties are treated under the property tax cap. The underlying problem matters for cities like Mount Vernon: PILOT-heavy portfolios constrain the city’s ability to raise revenue from non-PILOT properties. The system doesn’t just reduce revenue from subsidized properties; it limits the city’s ability to make up the difference. A prior version of this proposal was vetoed by Gov. Hochul. The current version is still working its way through committee.

An October 2025 report by Reinvent Albany and Cornell’s State Policy Advocacy Clinic argues that some IDA-backed housing projects may be constitutionally vulnerable under Article VII, Section 8 of the New York Constitution, though that question is not settled law. Mount Vernon’s IDA portfolio, dominated by residential PILOTs, would be squarely in the path of any court that ever embraced that argument.

The Orange County Precedent: A State Monitor That Works

The most powerful argument for external oversight is not hypothetical. It already exists. And it’s working.

In 2024, Senator James Skoufis secured a state-appointed monitor for the Orange County IDA through the state budget process. The appointment followed a corruption scandal that resulted in criminal charges against IDA leadership. But the monitor’s role goes beyond cleaning up past misconduct. It establishes a model for ongoing, real-time oversight of an IDA by an independent professional accountable to the state, not to local politicians.

On March 25, 2024, Brian Sanvidge was appointed as the Orange County IDA’s independent monitor. Sanvidge is a certified inspector general and certified fraud examiner with over 30 years of experience. His appointment is for a three-year term. Critically, the monitor’s reasonable expenses are paid by the IDA itself, not by taxpayers.

The monitor’s powers are substantial and concrete. He attends all IDA meetings. He reviews all tax break packages before they are approved. He can veto incentive packages that do not meet standards. He requires policy changes. He is state-appointed, independent of local officials, and accountable beyond the reach of the local political ecosystem he is overseeing. This is not a figurehead role. It is real oversight with real enforcement power.

And Sanvidge has used that power. When the Orange County IDA attempted to fast-track a $607 million Amazon warehouse project, the monitor vetoed the incentive package. The reason? The IDA had not sufficiently considered the impact on taxpayers. The analysis was inadequate. The deal wasn’t ready. The monitor said no.

The IDA’s response to the monitor proved exactly why the monitor was needed. The IDA board spent $100,000 of IDA funds on lobbyists in an attempt to eliminate the monitor’s position. One hundred thousand dollars (money that should have gone to community benefit) spent trying to remove the one person providing genuine oversight. The effort failed. The monitor remains in place.

Mount Vernon’s IDA exhibits the same patterns that justified the Orange County monitor: concentrated power in a small board controlled by a single executive, minimal oversight, chronic noncompliance with state reporting requirements, and conflicts of interest at the highest levels. The case for a state-appointed monitor in Mount Vernon is not aspiration. It is obvious.

What Accountability Could Look Like in Mount Vernon

If state legislation passes and external oversight is established, what should accountability actually look like in Mount Vernon? Here are the concrete reforms that this city needs, each one tied to a specific failure this series has documented:

• Mandatory school district consent before any PILOT that abates school taxes. The school district lost $13.85 million in five years while holding only a non-voting seat on the board it had to sue to obtain. The elected school board must have a formal veto over deals that reduce its funding.
• Independent cost-benefit analyses conducted by genuinely independent third parties, not developer-driven reports designed to justify predetermined conclusions. The 2014 Comptroller audit found no cost-benefit analyses were being conducted at all. The analyses must be public, peer-reviewable, and completed before the IDA votes.
• Board expansion to at least 7 members with City Council confirmation and mandatory seats for labor and education representatives. Mount Vernon’s four-member board is the smallest of any comparable IDA in New York State, and every member serves at the mayor’s pleasure.
• The mayor must not serve as chair. The chair should be an independent member with no direct political relationship to the appointing authority. When the person who appoints the board also runs the meetings and presides over votes, independence is impossible.
• Fixed, staggered terms instead of appointments “at the pleasure of the mayor.” Board members should serve defined terms that overlap across administrations, ensuring continuity and insulating the board from political pressure.
• Enforceable clawback provisions when projects fail to meet job creation, investment, or community benefit targets. The Comptroller found 671 promised jobs that never materialized (a 45% failure rate) with zero consequences for the developers. If a developer promises 200 jobs and delivers 50, there must be financial consequences, not just a shrug.
• Caps on total PILOT exposure so the city does not give away its fiscal future one deal at a time. The aggregate cost of all active PILOTs should be tracked, published, and subject to limits.
• Real-time public posting of all PILOT agreements, compliance reports, payment records, and financial data. The IDA failed to submit state-mandated PARIS data for two consecutive years. Transparency cannot be optional. A searchable, sortable public dashboard that any resident can access is the minimum standard.

What You Can Do Right Now

Reform doesn’t happen by itself. It happens because people insist on it. Here’s how you can make a difference:

Show up. Attend IDA public hearings. Ask questions. Demand answers. When residents fill the room, boards behave differently.

Silence is consent. Your presence is not.

Support transparency efforts. The Mount Vernon Civic Integrity Project has been filing FOIL (Freedom of Information Law) requests, analyzing IDA data, and publishing findings. This work takes time, persistence, and resources. Support it.

Contact your state legislators. Tell them Mount Vernon’s IDA needs real accountability. Constituent pressure matters.

Demand a state-appointed monitor. The Orange County precedent proves it works. Tell your legislators that Mount Vernon needs the same thing. The IDA has had decades to reform itself. It hasn’t. External oversight is the only path forward.

Support the school board’s resolution. The school board took a principled stand. Back them up. Tell your school board members you support their position that no outside agency should give away school tax dollars without the board’s consent.

Share this series. Send it to your neighbors. Post it on social media. Discuss it at community meetings. The IDA’s power depends on obscurity. Transparency is its antidote. When people understand what is happening to their tax dollars and their schools, silence becomes untenable.

It’s Time for Accountability

What is happening in Mount Vernon is not a series of isolated bad deals. It is a system that shifts public costs onto residents and schoolchildren while insulating politically connected developers from risk. The agency was designed without adequate oversight, transparent reporting, or genuine accountability. And the people who benefit from that design have no incentive to change it.

This series is not about opposing housing. Mount Vernon needs housing. It is not about demonizing developers. Developers respond to incentives. It is about accountability, transparency, and mathematics.

It is time to end the silence. It is time for oversight. It is time for accountability. And it is time for Mount Vernon to demand what every community deserves: a government that works for its residents, not for politically connected campaign donors.

*Some numbers and data analysis are from mountvernoncitizen.org. Chris McDonough and mountvernoncitizen.org are not affiliated with the Civic Integrity Project.

Part 1: What Is the IDA, What Are PILOTs — and Why Should You Care?

Part 2: Why Mount Vernon is Different – and Why That Matters

Following the Money

Parts 1 and 2 of this series showed what PILOTs are, how the Mount Vernon IDA’s governance compares to its peers, and how $44.4 million in tax revenue has been lost over ten years. Now we follow the money.

The system is not broken. It is working exactly as designed. PILOTs flow to developers. Campaign contributions flow back to politicians. Political operatives broker the deals and collect their share. The taxpayers, the schools, and the residents pay the price.

How the Pay-to-Play Ecosystem Works

The cycle works like this: A developer wants to build in Mount Vernon. They apply to the IDA for a PILOT — a tax break that can last up to 30 years. The IDA is controlled by the mayor, who serves as Chair. The developer, their attorneys, their consultants, and their business partners contribute to the mayor’s campaign. The PILOT is approved. The development moves forward. The developer profits. The mayor’s campaign coffers are replenished for the next election. The cycle repeats.

This is not speculation. It is documented in public filings. What makes Mount Vernon’s version of this cycle particularly troubling is the role of political intermediaries — individuals who are neither developers nor elected officials, but who broker the relationships between them and profit from both sides.

The 115 MacQuesten Money Trail

The campaign contributions from parties connected to the Opal 115 development at 115 South MacQuesten Parkway to the mayor’s “Friends of Shawyn Patterson-Howard” campaign committee total $25,050, as documented in New York State Board of Elections filings.

The Paolercio family — Anthony, Michael, Michelle, and Carmen Paolercio, along with their entities Michael Anthony Holdings, Inc. and 50-55 South Mac Realty LLC — are the property owners and sellers of the parcel at 115 South MacQuesten Parkway. Their combined contributions to the mayor’s campaign: $15,000.

Harris Beach — the law firm that performs legal work for the Mount Vernon IDA itself — contributed through its Political Action Committee and individual attorney Michael Curti. Combined: $3,349. The IDA’s lawyers donating to the IDA Chair’s campaign while their firm bills the IDA for legal services should, by itself, be a scandal.

Steven Horton of Grandview Consulting (part of the development team): $2,025. Jonathan Gertman of NRP Group: $650. Kenneth Plummer of Kensworth Consulting: $500.

The math: $25,050 invested in the mayor’s campaign. Over $20M go to the developers as ‘developer fees’.

The Timeline: From Campaign Cash to Tax Break

Before the 2023 election, Mayor Patterson-Howard had signaled to the public that the era of residential PILOTs was winding down. Mount Vernon had, in her own words, “built more than our fair share of affordable housing.” Residents had been clear at public meetings that they wanted the PILOT giveaways to stop.

They had not been heard. They had been managed.

July 13, 2023: The IDA adopted an Inducement Resolution for a 315-unit low-income housing development at 115 South MacQuesten Parkway — a $223 million project led by The NRP Group in partnership with Forward Thinkers Development LLC, Kenneth Plummer’s company. The Inducement Resolution is the formal commitment by the IDA to consider granting tax breaks. It signals to developers, lenders, and political allies that a deal is on track.

November 2023: Patterson-Howard wins re-election. Plummer was her chief fundraiser and deeply involved in her campaign. Campaign finance disclosures show payments from her campaign committee to his firm Kensworth Consulting for political consulting services.

November 30, 2023: The IDA holds a public hearing on the 115 MacQuesten PILOT. A Mount Vernon resident asks the mayor to recuse herself from voting, citing the fact that the developers are among the biggest contributors to her recent campaign.

The mayor’s response: “Sue me.”

January 25, 2024: The IDA passed the Final Resolution approving the 30-year PILOT for Opal 115.

The IDA’s own consultant, Storrs Associates, valued the tax abatement package at just shy of $15.3 million. The projected net benefit to the city? A mere $662,000 — spread over 30 years of speculative assumptions.

On December 17, 2024, Governor Hochul announced the groundbreaking ceremony. Plummer stood there, side by side with the Mayor (and IDA chair) in a hard hat branded “115 Opal.” The man who raised the mayor’s campaign money was now standing beside her at the ribbon-cutting for the project his political work had helped secure.

The Man at the Center: Kenneth Plummer

Plummer is not the only political operative in Mount Vernon’s development ecosystem. But he is the most connected, the most active, and one of the most directly enriched by the IDA deals his political work supports.

Kenneth “Kenny” Plummer is the CEO of Forward Thinkers Development LLC (equity owner on Opal 115) and the president of Kensworth Consulting, a political consulting firm paid by the mayor’s campaign. He has served as a Mount Vernon Democratic District Leader. He has run political action committees. He has been the architect of campaign slates for both city council and school board.

He is also a man with a documented history of violating the rules. In 2012, the New York State Joint Commission on Public Ethics (JCOPE) found that Plummer, while serving as president of DiRA Consulting, had failed to register as a lobbyist while engaging in lobbying activity. The matter resulted in a formal enforcement action by the New York State Commission on Ethics.

Plummer’s relationship with Mayor Patterson-Howard is not arm’s-length. During her 2023 re-election campaign, he served as her chief fundraiser and shadow campaign manager. He brokered donations from developers. He represented her in election-law disputes. He was the operational center of her political organization.

He didn’t just fund the campaign. He ran it. He defended it in court. And then he collected his reward through a development deal worth hundreds of millions of dollars, subsidized by the taxpayers of Mount Vernon.

The False Address

One detail about Plummer captures something essential about the nature of the influence he exercises. An investigation by Black Westchester revealed that Plummer, while serving as a Mount Vernon Democratic District Leader — a position that requires residency in the district — was registered to vote at an address where he did not actually live. He lived in White Plains. The Mount Vernon address he used was not his residence.

Formal challenges were filed with the Westchester County Board of Elections, the Westchester District Attorney’s Office, and the Mount Vernon Democratic City Committee. On July 1, 2025, Plummer resigned his District Leader position.

Forward Thinkers, Forward Slate: Developer Money and the City Council

Plummer’s company is called Forward Thinkers Development. The mayor’s City Council campaign slate was called “Mount Vernon Forward.” Plummer lent the name of his own business to the political campaign that would deliver a council majority aligned with the mayor — and, by extension, with the IDA’s PILOT agenda.

The “Mount Vernon Forward” slate included Danielle Browne, Cathlin Gleason, and Ed Poteat. All three received significant funding from developers with direct interests in Mount Vernon land deals. The contributions are documented in New York State Board of Elections filings.

The single largest contributor across all three? Michael Anthony Holdings and the Paolercio family — the same 115 MacQuesten property owners who gave $15,000 to the mayor. They gave $8,450 to Browne, with additional contributions to Gleason and Poteat.

Danielle Browne has since been elected Mount Vernon City Court Judge. Comptroller Darren Morton, the IDA’s own treasurer, was also supported by Plummer’s new Political Action Committee (PAC) “Rise Up Mount Vernon.”

Rise Up Mount Vernon: Developer Money and the School Board

The IDA’s PILOT deals hurt the school district more than any other institution — as we documented in Parts 1 and 2. And the school board is the one body with the moral authority — and the institutional standing — to push back against PILOT deals that drain the district’s tax base.

That makes the 2025 school board election all the more significant.

In May 2025, “Rise Up Mount Vernon” flooded mailboxes across the city with professionally produced, large-format campaign mailers promoting three school board candidates: Sakai Brown, Erica Peterson, and Randolf Scott.

Rise Up Mount Vernon claimed to be a Political Action Committee. But it did not legally exist as a PAC until May 16, 2025 — three business days before the May 20 election. Every mailer sent and every dollar spent before that date was, technically, unauthorized expenditure by an unregistered political committee.

The Rise Up Mount Vernon Facebook page had been renamed from “Mount Vernon Forward” — the same brand as the city council slate Plummer had organized. New name. Same operator. Same playbook.

The sole reported donor to Rise Up Mount Vernon on its registration date was Rella Fogliano, owner of MacQuesten Development, who contributed $25,000.

The pattern deserves to be stated plainly. Plummer’s PILOT development at 115 MacQuesten will cost the Mount Vernon City School District millions in lost tax revenue over 30 years. And Plummer’s PAC spent developer money to influence which candidates would sit on the school board that oversees the district being drained.

The System, Not Just the Man

It would be convenient to treat this as a story about one bad actor. It is not. Kenneth Plummer is the most visible thread in a web of mutual obligation that includes developers, elected officials, political consultants, law firms, and the IDA itself. He is a symptom, not the disease.

As Good Jobs First documents, the IDA model across New York State is designed to reward those who approve deals and punish those who resist. Mount Vernon is not an outlier. It is the logical endpoint of a system that allows political players to give away public money with minimal oversight.

But Mount Vernon is worse than most. Because in Mount Vernon, the feedback loop between campaign money and IDA approvals is not theoretical. It is documented. The mayor’s chief fundraiser is an equity owner in the largest PILOT deal her IDA has approved. The lawyers for the IDA contribute to the IDA Chair’s campaign. The property sellers contribute to every politician on the slate. And, ironically, even school board candidates are funded by the very developers whose projects drain the school district.

The question is no longer whether the system is corrupt. The evidence is in the filings.

The question is whether it can be stopped.

Part 4 will examine what state legislation, external oversight, and sustained public pressure can do to break the cycle.

Part 1: What Is the IDA, What Are PILOTs — and Why Should You Care?

Why Mount Vernon’s IDA Matters

In Part 1, we explained what Industrial Development Agencies and Payments in Lieu of Taxes (PILOTs) are. We showed how they work in theory: temporary tax breaks to jumpstart economic development, subject to oversight and accountability. And we showed what they look like in practice: $44.4 million in lost tax revenue over ten years, with the school district absorbing the heaviest blow. Now we turn to the question that makes this series necessary: Why is Mount Vernon different?

The honest answer is that Mount Vernon isn’t just using PILOTs. It’s using them in ways that are atypical, poorly governed, and structurally designed — whether by intention or neglect — to transfer public wealth to private developers with minimal accountability. The evidence is in three places: the composition and behavior of the IDA board itself, the portfolio of projects it approves, and the audit trail — or lack of one — it leaves behind. Together, they tell a story not of economic development, but of institutionalized failure.

What makes Mount Vernon’s situation distinctly troubling is not any single problem in isolation, but the way these problems compound and reinforce each other. A weak board doesn’t just make poor decisions — it attracts the kind of developers who benefit from weak oversight. A portfolio dominated by subsidized housing doesn’t just shift costs; it changes the constituency that depends on the IDA and weakens incentives for reform. And missing audit records don’t just hide past mistakes; they remove the institutional memory that might prevent future ones. This is a system working as designed — just not designed for the benefit of the public.

The Makeup of the Mount Vernon IDA — Weakest Governance in the State

Start with the basics: Who runs the Mount Vernon IDA? Under the IDA’s enabling statute (Section 902-C of New York General Municipal Law), all voting members of the board are appointed by the mayor and “shall serve at the pleasure of the mayor.” The IDA’s own bylaws, restated as recently as November 2024, confirm this: each board member is appointed by the mayor as “Appointing Authority.” There is no City Council confirmation. There are no staggered terms. There is no independent nominating process. The board has four voting members — the minimum permitted under the IDA’s own bylaws, which allow up to eight, and the smallest of any comparable IDA in New York State. Every one of them serves at the mayor’s pleasure.

The bylaws provide that the board elects its own officers — Chair, Treasurer, Secretary — at each annual meeting. But that election is a formality when every voter owes their seat to the same person. Mayor Shawyn Patterson-Howard serves as Chair. The person who appoints every board member also runs the meetings, sets the agenda, and presides over votes. This is not oversight. This is control.

Look at who fills those four voting seats, and the picture becomes even more troubling. Two of the voting members — City Corporation Counsel Brian Johnson and City Assessor Stephanie Vanderpool — are mayoral appointees in their primary city positions as well. They don’t just serve at the mayor’s pleasure on the IDA board; they serve at her pleasure in their day jobs. Their livelihoods depend on remaining in the mayor’s good graces. When a developer’s PILOT application comes before the IDA, Johnson is simultaneously the city’s chief legal officer and a voting member of the agency granting the tax break. Vanderpool is the official responsible for property assessments voting on agreements that reduce the taxes her own office would otherwise calculate. The conflicts are structural and obvious.

Comptroller Darren Morton serves as treasurer of the IDA. Morton is an elected official — the city’s independently elected Comptroller and the Pastor of Macedonia Baptist Church. And — this is the part that should stop you cold — he himself has received a PILOT for his own development project. The person responsible for the IDA’s finances has a direct financial interest in the same kind of deals the IDA approves.

And then there is the fifth seat — the one without a vote. The IDA’s bylaws provide for one “standing, non-voting Member, appointed by the Mount Vernon City School District.” That seat is currently held by school board trustee Dr. Chris McDonough. He can attend meetings. He can participate in discussions. But he cannot vote. Let the irony sink in: the institution most financially devastated by PILOT tax exemptions — the school district — is the only stakeholder with a seat at the table, and it has been stripped of the one power that matters.

Even that voiceless seat did not come willingly. In January 2018, the Mount Vernon Board of Education sued the IDA and the mayor over a tax abatement deal with a developer, arguing that the agreement operated as “a gift of public funds” and improperly shifted the tax burden from wealthy developers to ordinary taxpayers. It was only through the settlement of that litigation that the school district won a non-voting seat on the IDA board. The district had to go to court just to be allowed to have a voice (but no vote…).

The IDA has no dedicated Executive Director. Robin Mack (since departed) carried the title “Director of Business Development” — a vague, part-time designation that diluted accountability. Her position is temporarily filled by Pamela Tarlow, who also serves as the Executive Director of the Mount Vernon Urban Renewal Agency (URA). The bylaws call for a full-time Executive Director serving as Chief Executive Officer with general supervision and management of the agency. That position is unfilled. There is no full-time professional manager responsible for tracking compliance, monitoring projects, or ensuring that PILOT recipients meet their obligations. The result is an agency that approves deals but doesn’t follow up on them.

Now compare this to how other New York IDAs are structured:

New Rochelle’s IDA has 7 members appointed by the City Council — not the mayor — with 3-year staggered terms. The board includes a labor representative from IBEW Local 3 and the school board president. It operates with formal Governance, Audit, and Finance committees. The mayor does not serve on the board.

Westchester County’s IDA operates with seven members representing diverse constituencies: business, labor, education, and community development. Members are appointed by the county executive with confirmation by the county legislature required.

Erie County’s IDA has 19 members and includes voices from organized labor, education, and community organizations — ensuring that multiple stakeholders, not just the executive, have a seat at the table when tax breaks are handed out.

Mount Vernon’s four-member voting board, appointed by the mayor, chaired by the mayor, with two members whose city jobs depend on the mayor and a treasurer with his own PILOT, is not an independent public benefit corporation. It is an extension of mayoral power, operating without the checks and balances that every other comparable IDA in the state has adopted.

A Shift Toward Residential PILOTs — The “Industry” Is Low-Income Housing

Even if the governance were sound, the IDA’s portfolio would raise serious questions. Because the Mount Vernon IDA is not doing what IDAs were created to do. IDAs were established to promote industrial and commercial development — factories, warehouses, office buildings, retail centers, research facilities. Projects that create permanent jobs, generate sales tax revenue, and strengthen the local economy. That’s the statutory purpose written into Article 18-A of New York General Municipal Law.

Mount Vernon’s IDA has drifted far from that purpose. Its portfolio is now dominated by low-income residential housing — not industrial projects, not job-creating ventures, not the economic development the IDA was created to encourage. In 2024, 70% of the IDA projects receiving PILOTs were housing — 14 out of 20 projects. From 2016 to 2023, 14 of 21 entities receiving a combined $45 million in tax exemptions were housing projects. If you expand the timeframe to include all projects approved after 2010, the figure is even starker: of 37 approved projects, 29 were residential. That’s 78 percent.

Let’s be precise about what “low-income housing” means in this context. These are not “workforce housing” developments serving middle-income families. They are projects targeting residents at 60% or below of Area Median Income (AMI) — the federal threshold for low-income designation. True workforce housing serves residents at 80–120% AMI. Mount Vernon’s IDA-subsidized developments serve a lower-income population by definition, regardless of what the marketing materials say.

Developers use euphemisms — “workforce housing,” “mixed income,” “NOAH” (Naturally Occurring Affordable Housing) — because these labels sound better in a press release. But the underlying economics don’t change: these projects are financed almost entirely with public debt, including federal Low-Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC), state financing programs, and local subsidy agreements. Demand is guaranteed because of the housing shortage. Occupancy rates approach 100%. Construction jobs are temporary and typically go to workers with specialized union credentials, not necessarily to Mount Vernon residents. The revenues are stable, the costs are fixed, and public subsidies absorb the market risk. A developer building subsidized housing with tax credits takes on less financial risk than someone opening a sandwich shop. The PILOT is not what makes the project viable. The PILOT is what makes it extraordinarily profitable.

Here’s what no one says out loud: low-income housing brings more students, more service demands, and more long-term municipal costs — but minimal property tax revenue and essentially no permanent jobs. A 200-unit apartment complex doesn’t employ 200 people. It employs a handful of maintenance workers and a property manager — typically 1 permanent job per 50–100 units. It is not economic development by any reasonable definition. It is cost shifting — new costs imposed on taxpayers, with the revenue to offset those costs negotiated away for decades.

Even Mount Vernon’s own mayor acknowledged this reality in April 2024, stating at an IDA meeting: “We have built more than our fair share of affordable housing.” And yet, four new low-income housing projects totaling over 1,000 units are in the pipeline, all seeking PILOTs. The question becomes: Who is pressuring the IDA to continue approving these deals despite the mayor’s own acknowledgment that they are no longer needed? The answer — the subject of Part 3 — is more revealing than the approval itself.

Consider two specific PILOT projects: Qwest is seeking $11.5 million in tax breaks over 30 years. The developer’s fee on the project? $19.2 million. The city foregoes decades of tax revenue so a developer can pocket nearly twice the subsidy amount. This is not investment in Mount Vernon. This is extraction from Mount Vernon.

Heritage South/Target is requesting a PILOT worth $14.9 million in foregone municipal revenue over 10 years. The developer has admitted the property is “underwater” — meaning it cannot sustain itself financially without continued subsidy. And yet, they’re asking for 14 additional years of tax exemption on top of the original deal, further extending the city’s subsidy of a failing project. This is not temporary tax relief to jumpstart a viable venture. This is permanent life support for projects that cannot compete in the market.

Concentration and Cumulative Impact

These projects are not scattered randomly across Mount Vernon. They cluster along specific corridors — South Side, MacQuesten Parkway, Gramatan Avenue — concentrating infrastructure strain, school enrollment pressure, and social services demand in neighborhoods that are already underserved. Predominantly minority neighborhoods bear the disproportionate burden of tax-subsidized development.

The cumulative fiscal impact — documented in detail in Part 1 — bears repeating in one sentence: over the past five years alone, the school district lost $13.85 million in expected revenue and the city lost an additional $6.762 million, all surrendered in negotiated tax abatement agreements.

Meanwhile, any claim that IDA abatements are driving economic growth is flatly contradicted by the data. Mount Vernon’s sales tax revenue — the best proxy for local economic activity — has actually declined 7% since 2023. New Rochelle’s continues to climb. The sales tax gap between the two cities widened from $9.3 million in 2016 to $15.7 million in 2025. If IDA tax breaks were stimulating Mount Vernon’s economy, that gap should be shrinking. It’s not. It’s growing.

Graphic from Mount Vernon Citizen, https://mountvernoncitizen.org/

What the NYS Comptroller Found (and What Hasn’t Changed)

As we detailed in Part 1, the New York State Comptroller’s 2014 audit of the Mount Vernon IDA was damning: board members who didn’t know the agency’s own policies existed, no cost-benefit analyses, missing records, over $217,000 in uncollected PILOT payments, and job projections based on “informal phone calls” to developers. The IDA had promised 1,471 jobs and delivered 800 — a 45% failure rate. No one was held accountable.

That was over a decade ago. What has changed? Remarkably little.

What Comes Next

If the IDA’s own economic impact analyses are unreliable, if the board cannot even track who has paid their PILOTs, and if Governor Hochul vetoed a bill that would have required labor and school representatives on IDA boards statewide — who is the IDA actually serving?

The Mount Vernon IDA’s governance is the weakest in the state. The portfolio has been captured by one type of project. The oversight is functionally nonexistent. And the people most affected — students, homeowners, taxpayers — have never been given a meaningful voice.

The answer to who benefits involves campaign money, developer profits, political patronage, and a machine that rewards alignment with power while punishing scrutiny. That story begins in Part 3.

*Numbers and data analysis are from mountvernoncitizen.org. Chris McDonough and mountvernoncitizen.org are not affiliated with the Civic Integrity Project.

Series Introduction

This is Part 1 of a four-part series examining PILOTs in Mount Vernon — what they are, how they work, and why they matter to every resident and taxpayer. Over the next four installments, we will explore the mechanics of tax breaks, the impact on schools and city services, the patterns of political influence, and what can be done. This series is written for ordinary residents, not policy experts. If you pay property taxes or care about where public money goes, this affects you directly.

We didn’t set out to write this series because the IDA is obscure. We wrote it because the IDA’s obscurity is the problem. Most Mount Vernon residents have never heard of the Industrial Development Agency. They’ve never attended one of its meetings. They’ve never been told that a board they didn’t elect has been giving away tens of millions of dollars in tax money — their tax money — to developers, for decades. This series puts those decisions in the open.

For more than 50 years, IDAs across New York have operated in the shadows of local governance. They are not mentioned in city budgets. Their meetings are rarely advertised. Their approvals are seldom explained to the public. And when residents do discover what’s happening — when they learn that a developer has been handed a decades-long tax break without public debate — they often ask the same question: How is this legal? The answer is uncomfortable: it is legal because the state legislature made it so, and because no one is watching.

What an IDA Is Supposed to Do

In 1969, New York State created Industrial Development Agencies under Article 18-A of the General Municipal Law. The concept was straightforward: communities needed help attracting business. Factories were closing. Commercial corridors were emptying. Traditional government was too slow and too bureaucratic to compete for investment. So the state created a new kind of entity — a quasi-independent public benefit corporation — that could move faster.

The cities were struggling. Factories were closing or leaving for cheaper locations. People and businesses were moving to the suburbs. Federal money that had propped up urban renewal was drying up. The usual tools, zoning changes and building permits, were too slow and too rigid to compete for investment. Cities needed to move faster, offer real incentives, and have some leverage when negotiating with developers. The IDA framework was designed to do all three.

IDAs were given real power. They could negotiate directly with developers. They could acquire property. They could issue bonds. And critically, they could offer tax exemptions — property tax breaks, sales tax exemptions, and mortgage recording tax waivers — to businesses willing to invest in their communities. The idea was that these subsidies would be temporary. A business gets a break for a defined period, gets on its feet, creates jobs, generates economic activity, and eventually pays full taxes. Everyone wins.

The model contained built-in assumptions. First, that tax breaks would be used sparingly and strategically — only for projects that would genuinely transform a community but couldn’t happen without the subsidy. Second, that the temporary nature of the break was real — meaning that at some point, five years or ten years, the subsidy would end and full taxes would resume. Third, that job creation would be verified and meaningful. And fourth, that local voters and taxpayers would have visibility into these decisions and some control over how they were made.

Today, New York State has 107 active IDAs — more than any other state in the country. Collectively, they hand out approximately $1.1 billion in annual tax subsidies. That’s not a rounding error. That is $1.1 billion every year that does not go to schools, fire departments, police, road maintenance, or any other public service. It goes, instead, to subsidize private development.

The Mount Vernon IDA is one of those 107 agencies. It was created by the state legislature specifically to serve the City of Mount Vernon. Its board is appointed by the mayor. Its meetings are technically public, though few residents attend. And over the past two decades, it has quietly reshaped the city’s tax base in ways most residents have never been shown and never consented to. Those decisions may happen out of sight – but residents live with the consequences every day.

What a PILOT Really Is

PILOT stands for “Payment In Lieu Of Taxes.” Strip away the jargon and here is what it means: it is a tax break, a developer pays less in taxes than they would otherwise owe. The difference doesn’t vanish. It becomes a bill that everyone else in the city pays.

Here’s the normal process: A developer builds a new building. Once it’s complete, the property gets assessed at its new value. The owner pays property taxes on that assessed value — taxes that flow to the city, the school district, and the county. Those taxes fund police, fire, sanitation, roads, parks, and most importantly, public schools. That’s the basic deal of property ownership: you build, you pay, everyone benefits.

A PILOT changes that deal. Instead of paying full property taxes, the developer negotiates a reduced payment — sometimes as low as 10% or 25% of what they’d normally owe. These reduced payments are locked in for a fixed period. In Mount Vernon, that period is often 30 years. Thirty years of paying a fraction of full taxes. Thirty years during which the city, the school district, and the county receive less revenue than the property would normally generate.

And here’s the part that rarely gets said clearly enough: the services still have to be provided. When a new building goes up, it doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Residents call 911. Garbage gets collected. Roads wear out. And if the building is residential — as most Mount Vernon PILOT projects are — children enroll in schools. Special education services are needed. Buses run. Buildings need heat. Teachers need salaries. All of this costs money. In a normal development, those costs are paid for by new property tax revenue. A PILOT breaks that link.

Consider a concrete example. Suppose a developer builds a 300-unit residential building in Mount Vernon. The property is assessed at $50 million. Normally, that owner would pay approximately $1.2 million per year in property taxes: roughly 60 percent ($720,000) to the school district, 20 percent ($240,000) to the city, and 20 percent ($240,000) to the county. Over 30 years, that would total $36 million in revenue.

Now suppose the IDA gives the developer a PILOT that requires only 25 percent of normal taxes ($300,000 per year). Over 30 years, the school district loses $21.6 million, the city loses $7.2 million, and the county loses $7.2 million. And at the same time, those 300 new units generate enrollment in Mount Vernon schools — children who need teachers, special education services, counselors, and transportation.

Here’s what that looks like in practice: Between 2016 and 2025, Mount Vernon’s IDA gave out over $60.4 million in tax exemptions to 21 entities. In return, they collected only $15.9 million in PILOT payments. That’s a net tax loss of $44.4 million in ten years. The school district alone lost $26.7 million. The city lost $13.3 million. The county lost $4.4 million.

These are not theoretical numbers. These are dollars that did not reach classrooms, did not fund police patrols, did not fix roads. They went, instead, to reduce the tax burden on developers — many of whom are building projects financed almost entirely with public debt, including federal Low-Income Housing Tax Credits. The developers bear minimal financial risk. The taxpayers bear all of it.

The “But-For” Test — and How It Gets Gamed

In theory, there is a safeguard built into the system. Every PILOT is supposed to pass what’s called the “but-for” test. The question is simple: Would this project happen “but for” the tax subsidy? If the answer is yes — if the developer would build the project anyway, even without the tax break — then the PILOT isn’t justified. The city would be giving away revenue for nothing.

In practice, the but-for test is a rubber stamp. Here’s how it works: A developer submits an application to the IDA. They include financial projections — often prepared by their own consultants — showing that the project “needs” the tax break to be financially viable. The IDA board reviews the application. And seems to approve them every single time.

No one independently verifies whether the developer’s projections are realistic. No one asks whether the developer would have built anyway at a slightly lower profit margin. No one examines whether the “need” for the subsidy is genuine or manufactured. The IDA has no staff economists. It usually just adopts the developer’s own numbers — and then approves based on those numbers.

The but-for test is meant to answer a crucial question: Does the subsidy actually change behavior, or is it just a gift? A project that would have been built anyway is a gift — pure and simple. The developer keeps the full value of the tax break as profit. The public gets nothing it wouldn’t have gotten anyway. But when you ask a developer whether a subsidy is necessary, the answer is nearly always yes. Why would a developer say no? There is no downside to claiming necessity. The costs of lying are zero.

This isn’t a Mount Vernon problem. It’s a statewide problem. State Senator James Skoufis, who chaired a major investigation into IDAs in 2023, found that across New York, IDAs routinely approve subsidies for projects that would have been built regardless. The investigation documented case after case where the “but-for test” was treated as a formality — a box to check, not a genuine inquiry.

But in Mount Vernon, the problem is compounded by something else: the IDA’s own record-keeping is abysmal.

When the New York State Comptroller audited the Mount Vernon IDA in 2014, the findings were devastating:

• No consistent standards for approving projects
• Missing or incomplete records for approved PILOTs
• Board members who didn’t even know their own agency’s Uniform Tax Exemption Policy existed
• $415,483 in unpaid PILOT payments that the IDA had failed to collect
• A shortfall of 671 jobs — the IDA promised 1,471 jobs from its projects and delivered only 800
• Job verification was based on “informal phone calls” to developers, not documented monitoring

That audit was over a decade ago. As we’ll show in Parts 2 and 3, nothing has fundamentally changed. The IDA still lacks independent capacity. The but-for test is still a formality. And the records are still abysmal.

Who Actually Pays

PILOTs don’t create money. They don’t generate revenue. They don’t produce wealth. They redistribute burden. When a developer pays less, someone else pays more. And in Mount Vernon, the someone else is you.

The school district takes the hardest hit. From 2020 to 2024, developers in Mount Vernon would have owed $19.675 million in school property taxes. Instead, through PILOT agreements, they paid only $5.822 million. That’s a loss of $13.85 million in school revenue in just five years. The city lost an additional $6.762 million in foregone taxes over the same period.

Think about what $13.85 million means for a school district like Mount Vernon’s. That’s teachers. That’s aides. That’s special education services for children who need them. That’s building maintenance for aging schools. That’s after-school programs. Mount Vernon is not a district with money to burn; it is the most fiscally distressed district in New York State.

The fiscal consequence is not subtle. When PILOTs suppress $13.85 million in revenue over five years, that’s roughly $2.77 million per year that does not arrive in the school district’s budget. For context, $2.77 million per year would fund roughly 17–20 teacher positions, including benefits, or about 30–40 special education aides, or approximately 15–20 school counselors in a district like Mount Vernon.

This is not a small accounting adjustment. This is legal corruption — a wealth transfer from public services to private developers, blessed by law and rubber-stamped by local officials. A Reinvent Albany and Cornell Policy Crossroads report documented how these harms fall unevenly — with districts serving higher proportions of students of color among those losing the most revenue per student.

Mount Vernon fits that pattern precisely. The IDA has directed significant subsidies toward residential development that brings students into schools already straining under budget constraints. The students are there. The costs are real. The services are needed. But the revenue to support them has been given away.

Why This Should Make You Angry

The numbers alone should be enough. But there is a deeper problem: the structure of the IDA itself invites exactly the kind of self-dealing, concentrated power, and political favoritism that turns a public agency into a private tool.

If PILOTs are meant for industrial development and job creation, why is Mount Vernon’s IDA handing out 30-year tax breaks to low-income housing developers who already receive substantial federal subsidies? If the board is supposed to provide oversight, why is it the smallest in the state, chaired by the mayor, and staffed by people whose livelihoods depend on remaining in the mayor’s good graces? And if the but-for test is supposed to protect taxpayers, why is it a rubber stamp?

These aren’t rhetorical questions. They have answers — answers that involve governance failures, campaign money, structural conflicts of interest, and a political machine that has learned how to use a public agency for private benefit.

The IDA structure itself creates perverse incentives. A mayor appoints the board. Developers who get breaks contribute to the mayor’s reelection. The board then approves more breaks. The contributions increase. The mayor’s power grows. This is not necessarily illegal. It is not necessarily a crime. But it is unethical and represents a system designed to concentrate power and distribute public wealth to private actors. It is a form of legal corruption — the kind that happens not in shadows, but in plain sight, blessed by statute, and defended by those who benefit from it.

In Part 2, we’ll explore what makes Mount Vernon’s IDA different from every other comparable IDA in the state — and why that matters.

*Numbers and data analysis are from mountvernoncitizen.org. Chris McDonough and mountvernoncitizen.org are not affiliated with the Civic Integrity Project.