Florida and Mississippi may come close to sharing a border, but they are worlds apart in their current approach to the disclosure of economic development subsidies.

Florida has just launched an Economic Development Incentives Portal that makes it easy to discover which companies have benefited from programs such as the Quick Action Closing Fund, the Qualified Target Industry Tax Refund and the High Impact Performance Incentive.

Online subsidy disclosure is not completely new to Florida. An agency called the Governor’s Office of Tourism, Trade and Economic Development used to post a PDF list of recipients for various programs. After Rick Scott took office as governor in 2011, that agency was put under the auspices of the new Department of Economic Opportunity, and the old disclosure site disappeared. DEO promised to restore transparency and has now made good on that promise.

The new portal, produced by DEO in partnership with Enterprise Florida, covers a dozen programs with a total of about 1,250 entries, including “every non-confidential incentive project with an executed contract since 1996 that received or is on schedule to receive payments from the state of Florida.” DEO promises to add listings for confidential projects as their exemptions from disclosure requirements expire.

Searches can be targeted according to business name, county or date range. The results show company name, industry, subsidy value, county, approval date and project status. They also include both committed and actual numbers for jobs and investment, though in many cases the performance figures are listed as not available. The portal also includes projects that are inactive or have been terminated.

Florida’s portal is an important advance for subsidy transparency. The site would be even more useful if it included street addresses for the subsidized facilities (to facilitate mapping) and allowed downloading of search results in spreadsheet form.  At my request, DEO sent such a spreadsheet for the entire database, which I used both to prepare this piece and to upload the information to Subsidy Tracker.

Mississippi, on the other hand, is resisting online disclosure. The state legislature recently killed a bill that would have required the Mississippi Development Authority to publish an annual report on the tax credits, loans and grants it provides to companies in the name of economic development.

It turns out that the agency produced such a report for internal purposes but did not make it public. A group called the Bigger Pie Forum learned about the document—the 2012 Mississippi Incentives Report—and filed a successful freedom of information act request. Bigger Pie was only able to get a hard copy, but it scanned the report and has posted it online here. The info in that report has also been added to Subsidy Tracker.

Despite the reluctance of state legislators, online subsidy disclosure has come to Mississippi. Perhaps the Magnolia State will realize the futility of resisting official transparency and join the Sunshine State, among about 45 others, in making subsidy information directly available to the public via the web.

Good Jobs First’s Subsidy Tracker Used in New York Times Reportage

Washington, DC, December 2, 2012—The database created by the New York Times to accompany its new series on economic development incentives draws heavily from Good Jobs First’s Subsidy Tracker search tool launched in 2010.

“We worked closely with the Times and are pleased to have contributed what appears to be a large majority of the company-specific information the paper used for its excellent online feature,” said Philip Mattera, Research Director of Good Jobs First and creator of Subsidy Tracker, which can be found at http://www.goodjobsfirst.org/subsidy-tracker

“Subsidy Tracker has become the best-practice standard for states to disclose their economic development spending,” said Good Jobs First executive director Greg LeRoy. “States as politically diverse as Tennessee and Maryland have publicly acknowledged our technical assistance in launching or improving their disclosure websites. We also know that high-level officials in more than 30 states have responded to our 50-state report-card studies on transparency, job creation and enforcement.”

In the Times’ methodology page and every search display page, the main sources of company data listed are Good Jobs First’s Subsidy Tracker Database and Investment Consulting Associates. The latter is an expensive subscription service covering fewer than 5,000 U.S. deals going back only to 2010, while Subsidy Tracker is free, has nearly 250,000 entries with some programs covered back more than a decade, and spans more than 400 programs in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Subsidy Tracker also incorporates information from the Good Jobs New York database, which has more detailed entries on subsidies awarded in New York City.

Subsidy Tracker’s company-specific coverage also goes far beyond that of the Times’ database, which is limited to recipients of total subsidies in excess of $1 million. And whereas the Times aggregates the awards larger recipients received in each state into a single figure, Subsidy Tracker provides details on all the individual awards, including links back to official data sources and, when available, figures on the number of jobs and wage levels projected and/or created with each subsidy. When disclosed, Subsidy Tracker also provides project street addresses, enabling users to map and analyze the geographic distribution of the awards.

Much of the data in Subsidy Tracker first existed in far-flung sources and formats that were neither retrievable nor searchable. Much data had to be captured by customized software “scraping” programs.

Subsidy Tracker also contains previously unpublished data Good Jobs First obtained from state and local government agencies via open records requests. “Posting this unpublished data makes Subsidy Tracker, in effect, the original disclosure source for dozens of subsidy programs,” Mattera said. “We are continuing our effort to expand this portion of Subsidy Tracker’s inventory, especially with regard to city and county programs, which are far behind their state counterparts in terms of online availability.”

Good Jobs First is a non-profit, non-partisan partisan resource promoting accountability in economic development and smart growth for working families. It was founded in 1998 and is based in Washington, DC.

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The Good Jobs First Subsidy Tracker database reached a new milestone as the number of programs from which it draws information passed 400. Tracker now has more than 247,000 entries from 409 programs in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

Most of the latest additions are the results of our effort to obtain data from cities and counties. Given that localities are far behind states in putting subsidy information online, most of what we gather is unpublished information obtained via informal and formal open records requests to economic development agencies.

The localities for which we have just added such information are: Albuquerque, Baltimore; Kansas City, Missouri; Columbus, Ohio, Grand Rapids, Michigan; Janesville, Wisconsin; and Bloomington, Indiana.

We also got unpublished data on Alaska’s Oil and Gas Production Tax Credits and Louisiana’s Gulf Opportunity Zone bond program. The latter is technically a federal program, but the bond allocations are made by the Louisiana State Bond Commission.

Here’s a complete list of the recent additions:

• Alaska: Oil and Gas Production Tax Credits (2009-2010)
• Indiana: Bloomington Sustainable Partnership Grant (2009-2011)
• Indiana: Bloomington Urban Enterprise Zone Incentives (2009-2011)
• Louisiana: Gulf Opportunity Zone Program (2006-2011)
• Maryland: Baltimore Development Corporation Brownfields Program (2012)
• Maryland: Baltimore Development Corporation Business Assistance Programs (2005-2010)
• Maryland: Baltimore Development Corporation Loan Program (2005-Oct 2012)
• Maryland: Baltimore Development Corporation PILOTs (2003-Oct 2012)
• Maryland: Baltimore Development Corporation TIF Projects (2003-Oct 2012)
• Maryland: Baltimore Enterprise Zones (2005-Oct 2012)
• Michigan: Grand Rapids Brownfield Redevelopment Program (2005-Oct 2012)
• Michigan: Grand Rapids Industrial Facilities Property Tax Exemptions (2005-Oct 2012)
• Michigan: Grand Rapids New Personal Property Exemptions (2005-Oct 2012)
• Michigan: Grand Rapids Obsolete Property Rehabilitation Act Exemptions (2005-Oct 2012)
• Michigan: Grand Rapids Renaissance Zone Extensions (2005-Oct 2012)
• Michigan: Grand Rapids Tool & Die Renaissance Zones (2005-Oct 2012)
• Missouri: Kansas City Enhanced Enterprise Zone Local Property Tax Abatement (2009-Aug 2012)
• Missouri: Kansas City LCRA Property Tax Abatement (2009-Aug 2012)
• New Mexico: Albuquerque Industrial Revenue Bonds (2008-Aug 2012)
• Ohio: Columbus Downtown Office Incentive (2009-2011)
• Ohio: Columbus Enterprise Zone (2009-2011)
• Ohio: Columbus Jobs Growth Incentive (2009-2011)
• Wisconsin: Janesville Development Opportunity Zone Tax Credits (2009-Oct 2012)
• Wisconsin: Janesville TIF Forgivable Loans (2009-Oct 2012)

Subsidy Tracker, the Good Jobs First database on economic development subsidy awards, has begun its expansion from state programs to local ones. To kick things off, we have added more than 20,000 listings from New York City, Chicago and Miami.

The bulk of these are entries from NYC-specific programs that had been collected by our affiliate Good Jobs New York for its Database of Deals. Each item displays basic information while also providing a link to the GJNY website for additional details. We also have data on Chicago’s tax increment financing program going back to the late 1980s as well as info for Miami-Dade County’s Targeted Jobs Incentive Fund. We haven’t forgotten about state programs. Among the new entries are training reimbursement subsidies in Florida, Iowa and Louisiana.

Subsidy Tracker now contains more than 153,000 entries from 335 programs in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

Here is a complete list of the latest additions:

• Florida: Incumbent Worker Training (FY2010 to Apr 2012)
• Florida: Miami-Dade County: Targeted Jobs Incentive Fund (2003 to May 2012)
• Florida: Quick Response Training (FY2010 to Apr 2012)
• Illinois: Chicago: Tax Increment Financing (1987 to May 2012)
• Iowa: Industrial New Jobs Training (260E) (2002 to May 2012)
• Louisiana: LED FastStart (2009 to 2011)
• Nevada: Personal Property Tax Abatement (FY1999-FY2008)
• Nevada: Real Property Tax Abatement (FY1999-FY2008)
• New York: NYC: Commercial Growth Project (1986 to 2011)
• New York: NYC: Industrial Incentive Program (1986 to 2011)
• New York: NYC: Job Creation and Retention Program (2002 to 2009)
• New York: NYC: Manufacturing Facilities Bond (1986 to 2011)
• New York: NYC: Small Firm Attraction and Retention Grant (2002 to 2008)
• New York: NYC: Small Industry Incentive (1986 to 2011)
• New York: NYC: World Trade Center Business Recovery Grant (2001 to 2004)
• Texas: Enterprise Zones (2003 to 2010)

No part of the country is safe from the scrutiny of Subsidy Tracker, the Good Jobs First database of economic development subsidy awards. With the addition of data from Nevada and Mississippi, all 50 states and the District of Columbia are now represented in the search engine.

Nevada and Mississippi are present thanks to successful open records requests and the discovery of an obscure report. For Mississippi we have unpublished data from the state’s Workforce Education training program, which reimburses training costs for companies such as Nissan, Tyson’s Food and private prison operators CCA and GEO Group. For Nevada we have unpublished data on the Train Employees Now program as well as data on business tax abatements and sales and use tax abatements that were listed in 2009 report by the state legislature’s fiscal analysis division that just came to our attention.

Our latest batch of additions also includes unpublished data from programs in Connecticut, New York, Oklahoma, Texas and Utah (see below). Subsidy Tracker now contains company-specific data on more than 127,000 subsidy awards from 319 programs throughout the country. The depth of coverage still varies considerably from state to state, so we are continuing our push to obtain unpublished data on more and more subsidy programs.

New programs added

• Connecticut: Digital Media and Film Tax Credit (FY2009-FY2011)
• Mississippi: Workforce Education training program (FY2009-FY2011)
• Nevada: Business Tax Abatement (FY1999-FY2008)
• Nevada: Sales and Use Tax Abatement (FY1999-FY2008)
• Nevada: Train Employees Now (Apr2011-Mar2012)
• New York: Job Development Authority Direct Loan Program (2006-Mar2012)
• New York: Jobs Now (2006-Mar2012)
• New York: Manufacturing Assistance Program (2006-Mar2012)
• Oklahoma: Training for Industry (FY2008-FY2011)
• Texas: Skills Development Fund (FY2009-FY2011)
• Utah: Custom Fit Training Program (FY2009-FY2011)

New years added:

• Hawaii: Enterprise Zones (now 2007 and 2011)
• Virginia: Special Performance Grants (FY2009-FY2011)