New York–February 26th…Cuomo’s Buffalo Billion boondoggle continues to rear its ugly head, with news this morning that Panasonic is pulling out the state-owned RiverBend facility and shutting down its solar cell production operation costing nearly 400 jobs.

Cuomo’s signature economic development project has been plagued by rampant corruption at the highest levels of his administration and a string of failures and broken promises about job creation.

“It was insane to begin with that Cuomo used $750 million of taxpayer’s money to buy Elon Musk a factory, and it only got worse from there,” said NYGOP Chairman Nick Langworthy. “This project was corrupted by Cuomo from the outset, his top aide is in prison, and Buffalonians were sold a false bill of goods about jobs just to get their vote. There have been failures at nearly every turn, and this latest news from Panasonic is just another kick in the teeth to Upstate’s drowning economy.”

State officials are trying to put a band-aid on the bad news by announcing Tesla met the April deadline of bringing in 1,460 jobs by April 2020, but that is only because the original jobs agreement was drastically reduced from the original requirement to create 1,450 direct manufacturing jobs at the facility and more than 2,000 other jobs throughout the state to provide solar services within five years, as well as the creation of 1,440 indirect jobs to support the factory. The current agreement calls for 1,460 jobs by April 2020, including just 500 manufacturing jobs at the factory.

Chairman Langworthy called for Tesla to open its doors to the press and the public to see firsthand what is going on inside the taxpayer-funded facility.

He concluded, “Cuomo and Musk are keeping this factory hidden behind an iron curtain. The taxpayers bought it–they should open up the doors and let them in to see what is really going on.”