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Report: District of Columbia Job Subsidy Practices In Need of Improvement; Lag Behind Nearby Jurisdictions

February 11, 2015

 

Washington, DC—Despite the District of Columbia embracing four leading best practices, other basic economic development standards and safeguards remain absent.

WebBox_ABetterDealfortheDistrict_FINAL_Feb6Broadly, the District has four major shortfalls:

  • failure to set job creation and job quality standards,
  • lax reporting on project outcomes,
  • failure to enforce existing standards, and
  • the need for an online transparency database.

The report is available at:

http://www.goodjobsfirst.org/ABetterDealForTheDistrict

Despite such shortcomings, experience shows that the District can rapidly change course. For example, recent enhancements raised D.C.’s ranking on job subsidy transparency from dead last to 26th among the states in a 2014 Good Jobs First national report card study.

(more…)

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Posted in Clawbacks, Disclosure, Hidden Taxpayer Costs, Job Quality Standards, Jobs, Subsidies, Tax Credits | Leave a Comment »

New Jersey Subsidy Overhaul Scraps Cost Controls and Accountability

September 19, 2013

Fallout from Hurricane Sandy and this month’s tragic boardwalk fire are not the only costs that New Jersey taxpayers will face in the coming years – Governor Chris Christie has signed off on a massive overhaul of the state’s business subsidy system that will cost the state plenty.

The Economic Opportunity Act of 2013 consolidates New Jersey’s biggest subsidy programs into two programs that will likely cost more than the largest five currently do.  Gone are the Business Employment Incentive Program (BEIP), the Urban Transit Hub Tax Credit, and the Business Retention and Relocation Assistance Grant (BRRAG) tax credit.  The state will now award job subsidies to companies through the Economic Redevelopment Growth Grant and the Grow New Jersey program.  Supporters of the Act argue that streamlining and simplifying New Jersey’s subsidy system will enhance the business climate of the state, but the legislation is seriously deficient in the matter of accountability.

This is not to say that the state’s previous subsidies were without problems.  In its nearly two decades of use, BEIP awards have cost the state over $1.5 billion.  At one point, the New Jersey Economic Development Authority was even issuing bonds in order to meet its BEIP debt obligations to subsidized companies.

Recently the Christie Administration has accelerated its subsidy spending, amounting to more than $2 billion awarded to companies in the last 3 years alone through a combination of programs.  Over half of that amount was spent through the once-credible Urban Transit Hub Tax Credit program, a subsidy designed to spur development near transit stations.  With the support of Gov. Christie, the pool of credits available for the program was expanded and quickly exhausted, with many of the awards going to companies making short in-state moves.

The two remaining subsidy programs are deeply flawed.  The Economic Redevelopment and Growth Grant (ERG) program, enacted in 2008, diverts more types of tax revenue away from public coffers than any other tax increment financing program in the nation.  One of the first awards made through this program was a bailout for the struggling Revel Casino in Atlantic City – a project so financially toxic that Morgan Stanley walked away from its nearly $1 billion investment in the development.  (Revel has since declared and emerged from bankruptcy.)

Ironically enough, the other surviving subsidy, Grow New Jersey, was enacted to appease suburban and rural areas that had lost jobs through headquarters relocations subsidized by the out-of-control Urban Transit Hub Tax Credit program.  Since the first application was approved in April 2012, the state has awarded an average of $22.2 million per month to New Jersey businesses.

Unsurprisingly, in their new iterations, Grow New Jersey and ERG lack aggregate cost controls.  There is no annual or program-wide cap for use of either subsidy, virtually ensuring that New Jersey’s economic development spending spree will continue unchecked.  The potential costs to the state are immeasurable; fiscal analysis of the bill conducted by the Office of Legislative Services concluded that “the bill will produce an indeterminate multi-year State revenue loss” but it “cannot project the direction or magnitude of the bill’s net fiscal impact on the State and local governments.” There is a   $350 million maximum subsidy per company but business eligibility criteria have been loosened.

Aside from the potentially astronomical costs to the tax-paying public, the Economic Opportunity Act of 2013 introduces a host of other accountability problems to the state’s subsidy system.  Chief criticisms include the inclusion of retailers as eligible recipients, the removal of the state’s long-standing prevailing wage requirement for subsidized facilities, the elimination of the requirement that subsidized businesses pay a portion of health care benefit premiums, the allowance for businesses to count part time employees toward job creation requirements, and the high probability that both subsidy programs will accelerate suburban sprawl in the state.

In spite of the Christie Administration’s unprecedented spending on business subsidies over the past three years, New Jersey’s economic recovery lags behind most of the nation.  At last count, the state unemployment rate was 8.7 percent, earning it a ranking of 43rd in the country.  More unchecked spending on business subsidies is surely no remedy for the state’s employment problem.  The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, an adage unfortunately lost on Gov. Christie and New Jersey’s lawmakers.

Posted in Corporate relocations, Economic Recovery, Hurricane Sandy, Job Quality Standards, Jobs, New Jersey, Sprawl, Subsidies | 1 Comment »

More Subsidy Disclosure Coming in Oregon

March 15, 2013

winThis week our friends at OSPIRG scored another major win for subsidy transparency and accountability. OSPIRG, which played a central role in getting the state to adopt tax credit disclosure in 2011, is now bringing transparency to another key subsidy, the Strategic Investment Program (SIP).  SIP exempts many of Oregon’s largest and richest companies (especially Intel) from property taxes, based on agreements that those companies will be creating jobs.

Business Oregon, the state’s economic development arm, recently denied an open records request by OSPIRG to provide details about the state’s SIP deals.  OSPIRG then appealed to the state Department of Justice, which decided in favor of transparency and ordered Business Oregon to release records of the deals by next week.  The economic development agency is expected to comply.

While Good Jobs First has successfully obtained some types of SIP subsidy details in the past, the public has never had access to information about what exactly companies are promising in return for the special tax breaks.  Citing the program’s $322 million biennial cost, Celeste Meiffren of OSPIRG stated that “disclosure of information about SIP and all other economic development tax expenditures is important because taxpayers need to be able to track their return on investment.”

Way to go, OSPIRG!

Posted in Disclosure, Job Quality Standards, Jobs, Subsidies | Leave a Comment »

Massachusetts Business Tax Breaks Evaluated in New Report

March 12, 2013

masspirg reportA new MASSPIRG study asks if Bay Staters are “Getting Our Money’s Worth?” from the Commonwealth’s corporate tax breaks.  The organization evaluates 25 different special business tax subsidies for fiscal safeguards and accountability and transparency practices.  Among other findings, MASSPIRG concludes that:

  • Less than one-third of the subsidies are subject to annual spending limits.
  • Few of the Commonwealth’s special business tax subsidies have well-articulated public policy goals.
  • Nearly half of all business tax subsidy programs fail to publicly disclose information important for transparency such as recipient names, program-wide cost to the state budget, or results generated by the program.

MASSPIRG  also finds that state spending on business tax subsidies has more than doubled since 1996; the Commonwealth spent an estimated $770 million in 2012 through programs such as the Economic Development Incentive Program and the Film Tax Credit.  MASSPIRG’s recommended policy options to help the state get the best results from its substantial spending on special business tax subsidies include:

  • Transitioning from business tax breaks to outright grants.
  • Adding mandatory public policy goals and expiration dates to new and existing subsidy programs.
  • Continuing to improve disclosure of subsidies awarded through these programs.

You can read the rest of the organization’s recommendations to help the state get the biggest bang for its buck in Getting Our Money’s Worth? here.

Posted in Clawbacks, Disclosure, Job Quality Standards, Jobs, Subsidies, Tax Expenditure Budgets | Leave a Comment »

State Chamber of Commerce Favors Clawbacks, Job Quality Standards, Enforcement

March 11, 2013

Image_Maryland_Money

Last Friday, at the Maryland Senate’s Budget and Taxation Committee hearing, representatives from the Maryland Chamber of Commerce endorsed cornerstone Good Jobs First reforms. This includes attaching strings to taxpayer-funded economic development deals such as money-back clawbacks when companies receiving taxpayer money fall short. The Maryland Chamber even implied that these reforms should apply not only to economic development subsidy deals, but also public-private partnerships (sometimes called P3’s) such as the concessions operations at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport (BWI).

In our two recent 50-state report card studies, Money for Something and Money-back Guarantees for Taxpayers, we documented the growth of these reforms across the states. It has become common practice for state economic development agencies to incorporate clawbacks and job quality standards into deals, though many states still don’t do enough or apply standards unevenly. But as the Maryland Chamber said, it’s a big problem when these agreements aren’t being adequately enforced to protect taxpayer money.

Below is a transcribed passage of the audio from the Maryland Senate’s Budget and Taxation Committee hearing. We think it serves to show the strong support for reforms like job quality standards, clawbacks and enforcement of clawbacks, even from powerful business interests. This portion of the hearing occurs around 1:05 in the recording.

Senator Richard S. Madaleno, Jr. (D-18th District): While the vice chairman raised many of the issues that I wanted to raise, I just wanted to be clear that you are saying Mr. Palmer, you are saying that there are times when in a contractual relationship between the government and a business we can put strings…

Matthew Palmer, Senior Vice President of Government Affairs at the Maryland Chamber of Commerce: Absolutely.

Senator Madaleno: This is how we’re going to treat your workers.

Mr. Palmer: Right.

Senator Madaleno: And in the case when they don’t and they violate that we can have clawback? You support that structure?

Mr. Palmer: Absolutely. And I think that’s important. As [the ABC representative] talked about with these P3’s, the flexibility of whether it’s [the Department of Business and Economic Development (DBED)] or other places actually putting that into contracts, you know, putting those strings as you said, with those companies and being able to, when they don’t meet those, claw that money back. Say OK, you didn’t meet your needs. I think that is absolutely appropriate and they should be held to it. I think that’s the problem. And unfortunately, it seems to me, in some of these instances [as we have heard from the testimonies of  workers at BWI airport, Baltimore’s Inner Harbor and Hyatt], some of those companies were not held to those standards. So I think that’s a big problem.

Posted in Clawbacks, Job Quality Standards | 2 Comments »

Nike Runs Away with New Oregon Tax Giveaway

December 20, 2012

NikeTown, OR, USAOregon Gov. John Kitzhaber must have missed this month’s major New York Times investigative series on business subsidies.  Less than a week after the nation’s paper of record reported that such subsidies are a “zero sum game,” Gov. Kitzhaber called the Oregon legislature into a one-day special session to pass the Economic Impact Investment Act, a corporate tax giveaway custom-tailored for Beaverton-based sportswear retailer Nike, Inc.  The rushed deal and special session were announced last Monday, just four days before the legislature was to consider the bill, and a publicly available version of the proposed legislation was not made available until Tuesday.

HB 4200, which passed the legislature handily on Friday and was signed by Gov. Kitzhaber this week, allows Nike to determine its tax responsibility to the state through the controversial Single Sales Factor (SSF) apportionment method for the next 30 years, whether or not Oregon enacts tax reform during that period.  Nike had expressed interest in expanding in Oregon, but the company reportedly expressed to the Governor that it needed “tax certainty” to commit to growing in the state.  (Make sure to see the Oregon Center for Public Policy’s excellent take on what would constitute true “certainty” when it comes to taxes.)

In its original form, the legislation would have allowed the state to grant guaranteed SSF tax breaks through the Economic Impact Investment Act for a ten-year period, and those deals would have lasted for up to 40 years.  The few accountability amendments passed during the one-day session shortened the amount of time the governor has to strike these tax deals to one year, while also reducing the period during which the tax break lasts to 30 years.

While the bill requires that Nike and any other company vying for the special tax deal invest $150 million and create 500 new jobs, it is silent on wages and other job quality standards.  Significantly, the new law fails to set a meaningful term during which qualifying jobs must be retained by Nike or any other company approved for the sweetheart deal.  It appears that the last 20 years’ worth of basic accountability reforms – now standard practice for most states – are unknown to Oregon’s lawmakers.

The lack of accountability provisions are not the only controversial aspect of the new giveaway.  The Oregonian reported this week that despite the extraordinarily compressed period the legislature was given to consider the bill, the state has been secretly negotiating the deal, termed “Project Impact,” since last July.  You can read the state’s non-disclosure agreement with a company called EMK (presumably a site location consulting firm contracted by Nike to pressure the state) here.

Oregonians are not the only constituency to express concerns about the new law.  Intel, Oregon’s other major corporate employer, was reportedly involved in several heated exchanges with Nike over a particular provision of the original legislation that would have prohibited it from benefiting from the same deal based on the fact that it is already receiving considerable subsidies through Oregon’s Strategic Investment Program.  Unsurprisingly, that provision was removed from the bill.

Oregon, unfortunately, has no such guarantees that economic conditions and fiscal obligations will remain exactly the same in the decades to come.  There are no promises the state can make that protect its residents from change, and this new giveaway means that Oregon cannot rely equally on all businesses and individuals to contribute fairly in the future.

Posted in Corporate relocations, Job Blackmail, Job Quality Standards, Jobs, Single Sales Factor, Site Location Consultants, Taxes | Leave a Comment »

Terms of Engagement After Sandy

November 12, 2012

Photo credit – Eliud Echevarria: FEMA News Photo.

Sandy and the surges of water that accompanied her didn’t discriminate in terms of which lives, homes and businesses they devastated. People of all income levels and companies of all sizes were hard hit. Thousands in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut remain without power, hampering the relief effort. All of this is to say: there’s a long road ahead and communities must work with decision-makers now to create a plan for allocating reconstruction financial resources.

After past disasters such as the 9/11 attacks and Hurricane Katrina, Congress created federal assistance programs that became dominated by those that needed it least: large corporations and luxury housing developers. It’s safe to assume these interests, the typical beneficiaries of “disaster capitalism,” are trying to influence similar legislation after Sandy.

Post-September 11, 2001 federal resources helped firms that already had vast resources—such as Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley—or “small businesses” like boutique brokerage houses and law firms (see Good Jobs New York’s Database of Deals for more information). As recently reported by our Good Jobs First colleagues, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, most of Louisiana’s allocation of the federal Gulf Opportunity Zone Bonds went to giant petrochemical companies not located in the hardest hit areas.

Here are some suggestions on how to do it right this time:

Do help small businesses get back on their feet quickly with a minimum of red tape. This includes helping them deal with private insurance carriers. Provide technical assistance that helps them firm up their operations by making them more sustainable.

Don’t prioritize luxury housing. Real estate interests made sure that 9/11 Liberty Bonds for Lower Manhattan had so few strings attached that they fueled housing for the fabulously wealthy and no new affordable housing construction.

Do focus on the needs of residents and small businesses most affected. Subsidies and/or other land-use policies shouldn’t displace existing or future generations from working and living in healthy, affordable neighborhoods. Private Activity Bonds after Hurricane Katrina were available to such a large geographic area that those who needed resources the most were left with little access to these funds.

Don’t ignore the needs of low-income workers. The 9/11 attacks had a huge direct impact on the financial sector of Lower Manhattan, but they also had a severe ripple effect on low-income workers; think of the baggage handlers at the airports, retail workers in Lower Manhattan or restaurant employees in Chinatown. Before Congress in 2007, Interfaith Worker Justice testified that after Katrina, loose regulations lowered wages and greatly undermined job standards.

Do subsidize projects that create high-road employment in both the construction industry and for permanent jobs. If recent reports are any indication, there are decades’ worth of employment opportunities. Many of the areas swept away or without heat and hot water are home to the poor and working class and between 70,000 and 80,000 residents of the New York City Housing Authority have been impacted by the storm. If these people don’t have decent -paying jobs to return to, it will have devastating long-term impacts on the economy

A message to Katrina victims from some community groups engaged in 9/11 rebuilding still rings true after Sandy: Officials at all levels of government, particularly in Congress, must consider four things before creating reconstruction subsidy programs:

1) Programs must be created using broadly democratic and transparent planning principles.

2) The allocation of funds must prioritize the creation of good jobs and building sustainable neighborhoods.

3) Programs must focus on fiscal stewardship by rebuilding infrastructure and public goods that will help existing businesses rebound and foster new ones.

4) Programs must incorporate clawback provisions to make sure that recipients (especially large firms) live up to those job-creation requirements. Some of the largest recipients of 9/11 funds had grants withheld or were forced to repay them after laying off workers.

Some might argue that these safeguards will slow the recovery from Sandy. We think the opposite is true: if loose rules allow big companies with the most lobbyists and consultants to hog the trough, the neighborhoods hit hardest will get short-changed and suffer longest.

Posted in Climate Issues, Hurricane Sandy, Job Quality Standards, New York, NYC post 9/11 resources | 2 Comments »

UPDATED Hurricane Sandy Recovery Dollars–How to Make Them Count

November 2, 2012

Boat meets Metro-North Railroad in Westchester County, Photo credit: MTA Photos, Flicker

As New York, New Jersey and Connecticut begin the painstaking process of recovering from Hurricane Sandy, experts are estimating that the cost of cleaning up and rebuilding may top $50 billion. It’s likely— considering the dire state of roads, subways, bridges, commuter rail and other infrastructure–that the figure will escalate.

Using past disasters as an example, we can also expect that big business will seek to dominate the conversation and benefit most from the use of relief and rebuilding funds.

Billions of dollars in federal economic development aid was made available to New York after the attacks of September 11, 2001. Left out of much of the allocation and all of the decision-making were small businesses and low-income residents, especially in nearby areas of Chinatown and the Lower East Side. Much of the cash grants went to large business or wealthy “small” businesses like hedge funds and brokerages with few employees. Billions in Liberty Bonds went to building luxury housing in Lower Manhattan  and new headquarters for powerful financial firms like Goldman Sachs.  Good Jobs New York tracked these funds as part of our Reconstruction Watch project and in our Database of Deals.

How does this bode for an impending flood of rebuilding aid for the area? The answer is good and bad. Technology could be a great democratizer, and opportunities to educate taxpayers about proposals and get feedback are widely available. While acknowledging the existence of the digital divide, it has lessened dramatically since 9/11. Town halls, literal and virtual, are more accessible, (expect opinionated New Yorkers to chime in loudly once electricity is back online).  The bad part is that powerful business interests will be using their influence with policymakers to set the agenda while the rest of us are still preoccupied with recovering from the storm.

This week New York City announced two Hurricane Sandy recovery programs. A loan program capped at $10,000 for small firms and tax breaks for large firms spending more than half a million dollars on rebuilding. There are also “swing” spaces available in Brooklyn and The Bronx for displaced firms. Right out of the box, it looks like little has changed: small firms offered more debt and big firms with big checkbooks get tax breaks.

UPDATED Sunday, November 4: The New York City Economic Development Corporation (EDC) alerted us to the following:

We will update this post as new details emerge. For more information and how to apply for these programs or to help visit the EDC’s Back to Business webpage.

Keeping in mind that these programs will most likely evolve and new ones created, we urge officials to use this tragic storm to make accountability, equity and transparency central to rebuilding our communities:

  • Prioritize small businesses over giant ones.
  • Hold public hearings and allow citizens to help shape how funds will be allocated.
  • Post data on the web about which companies are receiving aid, whether there are any conditions on that assistance and whether those conditions are met.
  • Use resources to leverage high-road job standards (good wages and benefits).
  • Require funds for rebuilding to be sustainable for the environment and for future storms.  Wise public investment now will pay off in the future.
  • Include stringent work-safety rules.
  • Include clawback – money-back guarantee – provisions. This is especially important when it comes to large firms, which often make extravagant job-creation promises and then fall short.
  • Existing transparency practices should be maintained, or even improved, for storm-related subsidies.

The allocation of discretionary economic subsidies has become more transparent in New York City in recent years (a fuller explanation is here), yet policies that include democratic planning principles is badly lacking in New York City and many surrounding areas. There is a long road of rebuilding ahead and public funds must be used efficiently. To help ensure this, leaders must bring community members to the table while decisions are being made.

If history is any gauge, the interests of big business have already landed on the table of decision makers. But there’s still time to create a future that gives priority to the creation of good jobs for people that need them and the rebuilding of sound infrastructure for all.

Posted in Climate Issues, Hurricane Sandy, Job Quality Standards, New York, NYC post 9/11 resources | 4 Comments »

New Model Legislation from Good Jobs First

October 10, 2012

Washington, DC, October 10, 2012 — Good Jobs First today released an updated version of its model state legislation to make economic development subsidy programs more accountable and effective. It can be found at: http://www.goodjobsfirst.org/accountable-development/model-legislation

 

“This model legislation is informed by our many years of grading the states on their economic development program rules,” said Good Jobs First executive director Greg LeRoy. “At a time when states must make painful budget decisions, taxpayer subsidies in the name of jobs should be transparent, fair and effective.”

“Our model language is derived from the best state and local laws Good Jobs First has found while issuing six 50-state “report card” studies, including Show Us the Subsidies, Money for Something and Money-Back Guarantees for Taxpayers,” said Good Jobs First research director Phil Mattera. “These are proven, common-sense safeguards that every state should consider as a baseline.”

The legislation is designed to apply to every major kind of economic development subsidy that a state legally enables and which in turn is administered by either the state or by local governments. They include: corporate income tax credits (for job creation or retention, research and development, film production, etc.); property tax abatements and reductions; enterprise zones; tax increment financing districts; training grants; loans and loan guarantees; sales tax exemptions and rebates, and others.

The model legislation has four parts:

Disclosure: company-specific annual reporting on the Web of the costs and benefits of every deal, including Unified Reporting of Property Tax Abatements and Reductions to disclose online when local property taxes are lost that would otherwise fund schools and other local services;

Job Creation and Job Quality Standards: to make sure the cost per job is not excessive and that public subsidies help to raise living standards, not lower them;

Clawbacks and Rescissions: to ensure that deals are carefully monitored and that companies pay subsidies back (or lose future subsidies) if they fail to deliver on jobs or other community benefits;

Unified Economic Development Budget: to provide state legislators with a full annual accounting of every kind of expenditure the state makes for jobs to make sure that any budget cuts are fairly applied to less-visible corporate tax breaks, not just appropriations such as grants or loans.

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Good Jobs First http://www.goodjobsfirst.org is a non-profit, non-partisan resource center promoting best practices in state and local economic development and smart growth for working families. Based in Washington, DC, it includes Good Jobs New York http://www.goodjobsny.org.

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Posted in Clawbacks, Disclosure, Job Quality Standards, Subsidies | Leave a Comment »

Living Wage Bill passes in the Big Apple

May 2, 2012
photo by Good Jobs New York

James Parrott of the Fiscal Policy Institute at a press conference on the Fair Wages for New Yorkers Act.

What started out as an attempt to guarantee benefits to Bronx residents at a redeveloped armory over a decade ago found its way to City Hall Monday with the passage of Fair Wages for New Yorkers Act. The bill was sponsored by Bronx Council Members G. Oliver Koppell and Annabel Palma.

Efforts to redevelop the city-owned armory fell through in 2009 when the city prevented a developer from entering into a Community Benefits Agreement with the Kingsbridge Armory Redevelopment Alliance. In response to that campaign and concerns regarding wages in city-subsidized developments, a new city-wide campaign for better wages took hold led by the Retail Wholesale Department Store Union and Living Wage NYC a coalition of community, civic and religious organizations.

The final version of the Living Wage bill is narrower than campaign organizers would have liked (tenants of subsidized project won’t be covered, for example). Still, supporters of the bill report it is the strongest living wage law in the country and assert this is only a first step to expand Living Wage ordinances in the city.

Information on the Fair Wages for New Yorkers bill can be found here, but the fundamentals are:

  • Commercial and Industrial firms receiving $1 million or more in discretionary subsidies and have gross revenue of $5 million or more would have to pay their employees at least $10.00 an hour or $11.50 if no health benefits are provided;
  • Developments on property sold by the city for more than $1 million below market value would be covered;
  • Manufacturers and nonprofit organizations would be exempt;
  • Tenants of subsidized firms (e.g., retail stores, restaurants) would be excluded.

On a worthwhile transparency note, the bill would require firms that receive more than $1 million in subsidies (whether or not a firm would be subject to the living wage requirement) to provide wage data for all employees in lower-wage sectors such as retail and restaurants. This goes beyond what is currently required in an already laudable transparency bill approved in December of 2010.

However, it is unclear whether this bill will go into effect. Last week, Mayor Bloomberg gave an address attacking wage requirements at subsidized firms and during a radio show compared them to Communism. Bloomberg has vowed to veto the bill and if that is overridden (as is expected) he will continue to fight it in the courts.

Regardless of the bill’s future, a victory lap is being taken by City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, whose political dexterity has allowed her to use the issue advantageously as she positions herself to run for mayor next year, (Mayor Bloomberg is term-limited out of office). In the New York City Council, where bills generally only move forward with support of the Speaker, Quinn skillfully maneuvered the living wage bill through controversial waters. In the year ahead, irrespective of her audience, she can take credit with community and labor groups for her support of a campaign to help lift workers out of poverty and with the city’s business interests for curtailing the bill so much it would cover a relatively small portion of the city workforce.

Quinn has received both praise and criticism for walking out of a press conference celebrating the living wage bill when a heckler refused to apologize for calling Mayor Bloomberg a “Pharaoh”.

Posted in Community Benefits Agreements, Disclosure, Job Quality Standards, New York, Subsidies | Leave a Comment »

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