Hats off to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo for boosting the state's funding for tourism promotion.
At the state's Tourism Summit last week in the Big Apple, Cuomo announced a $15 million increase in state funding, which is welcome news given that last year's outlays were boosted to $60 million by grants from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Without Cuomo's increase, the total could have fallen back to $30 million.
Tourism in New York generated nearly $60 billion in visitor spending last year, which returned some $7.5 billion in state and local taxes and supported over 832,000 jobs. In short, tourism promotion works.
And yet some states and cities, and some of our elected representatives in Congress, still don't get it.
All we can say is, do the math. Do the math.