Get on the Northway at Exit 11, look right and you will see a giant scar in the woods. That’s the Round Lake bypass being built. Get off at Exit 12, head east to the Luther Forest Technology Campus in Malta, and you will see miles of other roads, as well as sewer and electrical lines, being installed there. Proceed further north to Moreau State Park and you will see the beginning of the new county water line that is under construction. All these projects assume chip manufacturer AMD is eventually going to come to Luther Forest, as it says it wants to do but hasn’t yet committed to (it has until next July to decide). What if it doesn’t come?

That was always a possibility, but it seems even more of one now, with the credit collapse. AMD was already in tough financial shape, losing big ground to its rival Intel, and is expected to spin off its chip manufacturing operations to focus on processor design. The New York Times reported Friday that analysts believe the company has had trouble raising the hundreds of millions of dollars needed to make that move. Maybe Congress’ financial bailout will help, maybe it won’t.

At this point, New York state would probably breathe a big sigh of relief if AMD stayed away, because it has promised the company $1.2 billion in incentives, half in cash. The state was already looking at multibillion-dollar deficits the next few years — and that was before the financial meltdown on Wall Street, which is by far the state’s single biggest revenue producer. The state needs every dollar of the million per job it would be giving AMD.

Of course an AMD no-show wouldn’t mean the state would get away paying nothing. Thanks principally to former Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno, it has already provided $22 million for the bypass, $37 million for the roads at Luther Forest, and $30 million toward the $67 million county water system.

In other words, the state has paid nearly $100 million on a speculative venture that, whether it comes to fruition or not, will result in more sprawl development in what was already the area’s fastest-growing and wealthiest county. And the Saratoga County Water Authority last month borrowed $45 million for the pipeline, which it (read taxpayers) will still have to pay off if AMD (the biggest expected customer) doesn’t come. It’s all about as irresponsible as the subprime mortgage game.