$40 million in state money. That’s what it cost New York to keep Broadridge Financial Solutions from walking out the door and taking 2,200 jobs with it.
Gov. Kathy Hochul announced the deal this week. Under the agreement, Empire State Development Corporation will extend up to $40 million in grants and tax credits to Broadridge, provided the company invests $78 million in its Long Island facilities and holds onto its New York workforce. Without that package, state officials say Broadridge had been seriously considering cutting its New York headcount down to roughly 750 employees.
Most Long Islanders couldn’t tell you what Broadridge actually does. Fair enough. The company isn’t exactly a household name. It processes stock trades by the millions each day, distributes more than $7 billion in shareholder documents annually, and quietly keeps the back-office machinery of Wall Street from seizing up. For the fiscal year ended June 30, Broadridge posted earnings of $839.5 million on revenue of $6.9 billion. It’s a very big operation that most people never think about.
That’s exactly why its exit would’ve hurt.
The company had been weighing a partial departure: close its facility in Edgewood, in Islip town, and potentially its Lake Success headquarters too, then redistribute the workload to cheaper operations in California, Connecticut, Florida, Tennessee, and Texas. According to its own application to the state, that move could’ve saved Broadridge up to $270 million over ten years. The financial case for leaving wasn’t close.
Hochul didn’t treat the incentives as a handout. “We competed for these jobs,” she said. “We secured them and we’re anchoring them here for the long term. Each of these jobs will support families, local businesses and communities. This is exactly how we grow our economy.”
Kevin Law, board chairman of Empire State Development, the state agency that put the package together, was less diplomatic about it. “People should be doing cartwheels that they’re staying,” Law told Long Island Press. “They are the largest public company we have. They have 2,000 employees. That’s 2,000 families that depend on them.”
The skeptics have a point too. Broadridge earned nearly $6.9 billion in revenue last fiscal year. It’s not a struggling startup that can’t make rent. Handing a corporation that size a nine-figure incentive package gives taxpayers legitimate reason to ask whether the state is negotiating from strength or from desperation.
But here’s the context that doesn’t show up in the press release. Long Island’s Route 110 corridor has been bleeding corporate tenants for fifteen years. Arrow Electronics, which was founded in 1962 and built its name as an electronics distributor, left Melville for Colorado in 2011. Comtech Telecommunications made the same trip out of Melville in 2024. Both companies were anchors on a stretch of road that once held one of the highest concentrations of corporate headquarters on the East Coast. Their exits weren’t abstract losses. They meant fewer jobs, fewer vendors, fewer property taxes flowing into local governments that were already stretched.
Broadridge employs 2,200 people in New York right now. The company’s application indicates that only about 1,450 of those positions were ever truly at risk. But even that number matters enormously when you start doing the downstream math. Fewer paychecks means fewer lunches bought in Lake Success, fewer LIRR tickets sold to commuters heading into the city, fewer families that can justify paying the property taxes that define life here. Suffolk County’s tax base doesn’t have a lot of room to absorb that kind of hit.
None of that makes the deal costless. $40 million in grants and credits is real money, and New York State’s budget is already under pressure heading into 2026. What the state got in return is a commitment, not a guarantee. Broadridge can’t legally be handcuffed to Long Island forever. Circumstances change, companies change their minds, and the next round of negotiations will arrive eventually.
Law’s position, stated plainly: the cost of retention is lower than the cost of replacement. “People should be doing cartwheels that they’re staying,” he said. The question taxpayers should be asking is whether that math was actually tested before the check was written.