Anti-big government gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino is fighting to hold on to a $1.4 million tax break for a company that created only one job and put back into the economy less than it took out.

In a last-minute bid to keep that lucrative government subsidy, records show he overstated the worth of the company that got the break by including properties he'd already sold off.

The millionaire Buffalo businessman, who last week became his party's candidate for governor, has shaped much of his Tea Party message by railing against government spending and vowing Draconian bureaucratic bloodletting.

At the same time, he's received millions of dollars in tax breaks over the years, mostly as payback for investing in distressed properties in and around his native Buffalo, where manufacturing jobs have disappeared and the economy has long been in a free fall.

The program's incentive was to generate jobs and inject investment into a downtrodden area that would, in the end, offset the sales and real estate tax revenue lost.

It didn't work out that way.

When the tax break began, J-P Group had one full-time employee. By 2008, that number had grown to two.