Comments on: Minnesota’s Rural JOBZ Program Falls Short

By: UPDATE: Minnesota State Senate Votes to Axe Rural JOBZ Program «

UPDATE: Minnesota State Senate Votes to Axe Rural JOBZ Program « — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 19:28:47 +0000

[...] as the Jobs Opportunity Building Zones (JOBZ) program. This is the latest development since GJF blogged in February about the state Legislative Auditor’s report concluding that the subsidy program is [...]

By: Anne Nolan

Anne Nolan — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 04:30:47 +0000

Karla, thanks for your prompt and informative follow-up. This was news to me. I know at least one local legislator who will find DEED’s inventive interpretation of its JOBZ disclosure obligation very interesting. As my dad used to like to say, “You learn something new every day.” Thanks for your work.

By: Karla Walter

Karla Walter — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 18:22:33 +0000

Thank you for your comment. To clarify, JOBZ participants must file annual reports that are posted Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development website. However, tax breaks continue to be confidential under Minnesota law, so these reports do not disclose the value of the JOBZ tax breaks the firm received. Usually, JOBZ reports will list the total subsidy value as $0. Occasionally, when a firm has also received another type of subsidy from the community, its value will be listed. I contacted the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development, who confirmed that this has always been the reporting practice for the JOBZ program.

By: Anne Nolan

Anne Nolan — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 15:21:28 +0000

Are you sure about the “tax credits like JOBZ are not covered” part? Thanks to the efforts of JOBS NOW Coalition, MAPA, and then-Sen. John Hottinger, the JOBZ statue was amended before it was enacted to explicitly require that JOBZ deals be covered by the business subsidy disclosure law. There was a citation to the business subsidy statute right in the JOBZ statute.

If reports from JOBZ deals are not showing up in the business subsidy reports, I can think of three alternative explanations:

1) JOBZ’s been amended again to take that requirement out (I hope not!), or
2) The deals are too recent to show up in the data (the subsidy disclosure process does have some serious lags in Minnesota), or
3) For some reason the law’s not being followed or enforced by DEED.

I would be interested in learning which of these explanations might be true.