Some 15 towns in New York's Broome, Delaware, Tioga, and Sullivan counties — areas located in and near the Southern Tier region bordering Pennsylvania — are looking into options for leaving New York to join their southern neighbor.
The motivation for secession is financial: New York has the harshest tax burden in the nation, and the state banned fracking in 2014. The Southern Tier has extensive deposits of oil shale, which before the ban were to have provided a much-needed economic boost for the area.
"The Southern Tier is desolate," said Jim Finch, a town supervisor who supports the secession proposal. "We have no jobs and no income. The richest resource we have is in the ground."
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