Politics on the Hudson

 New York has a lot riding on success for Detroit automakers, with more than 230,000 people in auto industry-related jobs, a new report shows.

   “This goes beyond Detroit,” state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said in releasing the report. “On top of the jobs, the Big Three owe billions to New York financial institutions. A collapse of one or more automakers would hurt upstate communities that are desperately fighting for every job, and hurt the already reeling financial services sector even more.”

   DiNapoli, who supports a federal rescue of the automakers, said any bailout deal has to have strings attached. That means oversight and assurance that the money is being spent reasonably, he said.

   Some statistics on New York and cars:

  —About 3.2 percent of the state’s workforce works in an auto-related business. According to the U.S. Census, about 30,000 people are directly employed by the auto industry, and another 200,000 work in related companies, such as parts suppliers. Their wages and benefits total $12 billion.

  —The bulk of the automotive sector jobs upstate are in manufacturing parts. There are nearly 200 manufacturers of auto parts in the state, about 4 percent of the nation’s auto parts jobs. They produce $9 billion in parts, about 5 percent of the country’s auto parts shipments by value.

  —Most auto-parts manufacturers are in western New York. There are about 16,000 people working in that sector in the Buffalo-Cheektowaga-Tonawanda area. Another 4,700 people from the Rochester area work in the industry. Other upstate communities, such as Syracuse, Ithaca, Cortland and Utica, rely on employment in the field.

  —Automakers owe an estimated $100 billion or more to financial institutions. Defaulting on the loans could hit New York-based financial institutions hard.

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