Archive for the ‘Subsidies’ Category

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Kansas’s PEAK Subsidy Fails Performance Audit

October 3, 2013

bummer for the sunflower stateA Kansas state legislative audit of the controversial Promoting Employment Across Kansas (PEAK) subsidy program found that it is inadequately managed and that previously approved deals exceed the program’s spending cap.

Clawback readers may recall that PEAK is no stranger to controversy – it is Kansas’s most used subsidy in the bitter jobs war with Missouri that continues to ravage the Kansas City metropolitan economy. PEAK diverts the state personal income tax withholdings of employees as a subsidy to those workers’ employers.  It was enacted in 2009 to compete with Missouri’s similarly structured Quality Jobs tax credit, and has unfortunately inspired copycat programs in other states.  (For more information, see Good Jobs First’s 2012 report on personal income tax diversion subsidies, Paying Taxes to the Boss.)

Despite its poor program disclosure, in 2012 the Kansas City Business Journal was able to determine that PEAK was subsidizing short border-hopping company moves primarily in the counties around Kansas City.  At that time, 44 of 55 participating businesses were located in either Johnson or Wyandotte Counties. The list of subsidized businesses included the headquarters of movie theater company AMC Entertainment, which was sold by Bain Capital to a Chinese company shortly after its PEAK award was approved.

The audit provides clear confirmation of PEAK fueling the border war.  Legislative auditors found that all but a handful of PEAK awards were given to companies relocating into JohnsonCounty.  Of the 1,550 jobs represented by companies in JohnsonCounty, all but 110 came directly from Missouri.

More disturbingly, the audit revealed that in general, “officials have prioritized getting companies into the program rather than monitoring and measuring program results.”  Specifically, auditors found that:

  • Assessing the benefits of the PEAK program is difficult because the Department of Commerce has not compiled meaningful information on the program.
  • The department’s data were incomplete because many companies had not submitted the required quarterly and annual reports.
  • The data were also incomplete because the department had not processed companies’ quarterly reports that were filed.
  • The department had not sufficiently verified the self-reported data it compiled in its information system.

The state revenue loss due to the PEAK program has grown from $2.7 million in 2010 to an estimated $12.5 million in 2012.  Among the most damning findings of the audit is the fact that the Department of Commerce has exceeded the statutory financial cap that limits awards made through the program to $6 million annually.  Commerce authorized $7.5 million in PEAK credits for fiscal year 2013.  This has ignited an embarrassingly amateur debate between the department and the legislative audit office over whether the cap is cumulative or annual.

Although disappointing, these findings shouldn’t come as a surprise to those who beat the jobs war drums in Kansas.  Their rush to engage with Missouri’s equally irresponsible fiscal behavior has produced an all too familiar result.

Posted in Corporate relocations, Disclosure, Jobs, Kansas, Missouri, Subsidies | 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 »

Arkansas Will Claw Back Hewlett-Packard Subsidies

July 11, 2013

DSC_1979 2

Photo and the caption by Arkansas.gov: “Governor Beebe today [Mar 3, 2010] helped dedicate the HP Conway facility. HP expects to employ 1,200 Arkansans at the new facility.”

After laying off 500 workers from its publicly subsidized facility in Conway, Hewlett-Packard will have to repay some of the money it has received from the state, Arkansas economic development officials announced.

When HP opened its customer support facility in 2010 (the deal was announced in 2008), it was supposed to be a game changer for the economic development reputation of Arkansas. The state was willing to pay the price and offered HP state and local subsidies.

Arkansas never disclosed the full value of the subsidy package, but it was reported that the company received at least $17 million upfront: $10 million from the state’s Quick-Action Closing Fund and $7.2 million from city of Conway, including $5 million the city spent to upgrade the industrial park where the facility was later located.

HP was also eligible for various performance-based tax refunds, rebates and credits. Although Arkansas does not publish data on its subsidies, the state made some of that information available to Good Jobs First. The data, now available through Subsidy Tracker, includes: three awards from the Existing Workforce Training Program for a total of $62,882; an income tax credit from the Advantage Arkansas program worth $53,418; and a refund of $21,801 from the Tax Back Sales and Use Tax Refunds program.

After the layoff, the state officials announced that HP no longer met the minimum requirement of 1,000 jobs at the Conway faculty and that the state would work with the company to determine how much money needs to be returned. It is unclear, however, whether the clawback will include only upfront grants or also already claimed tax and workforce training subsidies, and whether HP will have to return any local funds.

Although HP’s layoffs are not good news, it is encouraging that Arkansas is willing to implement the clawback provisions it wisely included in its deal with the company.

Posted in Arkansas, Clawbacks, Subsidies, Subsidy Tracker | 1 Comment »

California Enterprise Zones Tax Credit Overhaul Enacted

July 1, 2013

CA EZ 2Last week brought a satisfying conclusion to Governor Jerry Brown’s two year effort to bring an end to California’s controversial Enterprise Zones (EZ).  Assembly Bill 93 passed the Senate with a required two-thirds vote and awaits the governor’s signature.  While falling short of Gov. Brown’s original intent to completely eliminate the $700 million per year program, the bill will implement critical reforms to EZ hiring tax credits and de-fund the most wasteful aspects of the subsidy.

The EZ program has been criticized in the past for failing to actually create jobs, its spiraling out-of-control costs to the state, directing the vast majority of its financial benefits to extremely wealthy companies, subsidizing low wage employers and job sprawl, and assisting a company that replaced its entire unionized work force with new workers.  Last month it was discovered that two strip clubs were receiving hiring tax credits for their employees.  Throughout its 27 year history, the program has never been transparent to taxpayers and recent revelations about which companies are getting tax breaks have unleashed a wave of opposition from interest groups and the public alike.

Among the reforms to EZ hiring tax credits enacted by AB 93 are:

  • A requirement that a business actually grow new positions to qualify for tax credits
  • A wage standard of 1.5 times the minimum wage for new jobs
  • Targeted hiring of ex-offenders, unemployed, veterans, and people receiving income assistance (credits are limited to these employees)
  • Public transparency requirements

In order to secure reforms to the hiring tax credits, the bill’s proponents enacted two new business tax credits, both of which would be funded with the state’s savings resulting from reduction of hiring credit activity.  A new credit against the state sales and use tax could be claimed by biotech and manufacturing companies for the purchase of business equipment.  Unfortunately, this credit will have no statewide or annual cap, although business purchases that exceed $200 million annually per company are ineligible.  The state estimates its cost at $400 million a year.

The second subsidy program enacted with AB 93 would take the form of a competitive discretionary fund.  Tax credits would be awarded to major job creation-focused projects approved by a newly established California Competes Tax Credit Committee, which would control $200 million worth of tax credits per year.

Only time will tell if California has traded one boondoggle subsidy for another, but it is encouraging that the new programs will be held to higher standards of accountability and transparency.  Almost anything will be an improvement over the EZs, and for the time being at least, California appears to have learned its lesson.

Posted in Disclosure, Enterprise Zones, Subsidies | Leave a Comment »

Giant Job Subsidy Packages Grow More Common and Costly

June 19, 2013

moneybagsWashington, DC, June 19, 2013 — In recent years, state and local governments have been awarding giant economic development subsidy packages to corporations more frequently than ever before. The packages frequently reach nine and even ten figures, and the cost per job averages $456,000 and often exceeds $1 million.

These are the findings of Megadeals, a report released today by Good Jobs First, a non-profit resource center based in Washington, DC.

“These subsidy awards are getting out of control,” said Philip Mattera, research director of Good Jobs First and principal author of the report. “Huge packages that used to be reserved for ‘trophy’ projects creating large numbers of jobs are now being given away more routinely.”

In a painstaking review using hundreds of sources, Good Jobs First identifies 240 “megadeals,” or subsidy awards with a total state and local cost of $75 million or more each. The cumulative cost of these deals is more than $64 billion.

The number of such deals and their costs are rising: since 2008, the average frequency of megadeals per year has doubled (compared to the previous decade) and their aggregate annual cost has roughly doubled as well, averaging around $5 billion. For those deals where job projections were available, the average cost per job is $456,000.

Michigan has the most megadeals, with 29, followed by New York with 23; Ohio and Texas with a dozen each; Louisiana and Tennessee with 11 each; and Alabama, Kentucky and New Jersey with 10 each. Forty states plus the District of Columbia have done at least one megadeal.

In dollar terms, New York is spending the most, with megadeals totaling $11.4 billion. Next is Michigan with $7.1 billion, followed by five states in the $3 billion range: Oregon, New Mexico, Washington, Louisiana, and Texas.

“Despite their high costs, some of the deals involve little if any new-job creation,” said Good Jobs First executive director Greg LeRoy. “Some are instances of job blackmail, in which a company threatens to move and gets paid to stay put. Others involve interstate job piracy, in which a company gets subsidies to move existing jobs across a state border, sometimes within the same metropolitan area.”

Megadeals have been awarded to many of the largest and best known companies based in the United States as well as foreign ones doing business here, including: every large domestic automaker and all of the foreign auto producers with appreciable U.S. sales; oil giants such as Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell; aerospace leaders Boeing and Airbus; banks such as Citigroup and Goldman Sachs; media companies such as Walt Disney and its subsidiary ESPN; retailers such as Sears and Cabela’s; old-line industrials such as General Electric and Dow Chemical; and tech leaders such as Amazon.com, Apple, Intel and Samsung.

The most expensive single listing is a 30-year discounted-electricity deal worth an estimated $5.6 billion given to aluminum producer Alcoa by the New York Power Authority. Taking all of a company’s megadeals into account, Alcoa is at the top with its single $5.6 billion deal, followed by Boeing (four deals worth a total of $4.4 billion), Intel (six deals worth $3.6 billion), General Motors (11 deals worth $2.7 billion), Ford Motor (9 deals worth $2.1 billion), Nike (1 deal worth $2 billion) and Nissan (four deals worth $1.8 billion).

Fifty-six megadeals went to corporations with parents based outside the United States and seven more went to joint ventures of domestic and foreign companies.

The megadeals list is a new enhancement of Good Jobs First’s Subsidy Tracker database, the first online compilation of company-specific data on economic development deals from around the country.

Until now, the content of Subsidy Tracker has consisted exclusively of official disclosure data provided by state and local governments. However, many large deals pre-dated disclosure and many recent ones are missing from the official lists because of gaps in state and local transparency practices. To overcome those constraints, Good Jobs First went back and assembled information on large deals using a wider variety of sources. The resulting list of megadeals has been incorporated into Subsidy Tracker.

In a policy sidebar, the study points out that the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) has been long-negligent in failing to promulgate regulations for how state and local governments should account for tax-based economic development expenditures.  If GASB were to finally promulgate such regulations—covering both programs and deals—taxpayers would have standardized, comparable statistics about megadeals and could better weigh their costs and benefits.

Posted in Disclosure, Subsidies, Subsidy Tracker | Leave a Comment »

Economic Development Among Consenting Adults

June 14, 2013

Lalo Alcaraz (c) 2013

California has unwittingly joined New York and Pennsylvania in the distinction of subsidizing strip clubs. Is there a bi-coastal consensus for, ahem, full disclosure?

Late last month, as a part of California Governor Jerry Brown’s campaign to end the wasteful and ineffective Enterprise Zone (EZ) program, the Sacramento area EZ businesses list was made public.  This disclosure of companies benefiting from EZ hiring tax credits was the first time that taxpayers in California have ever had access to information about which companies receive economic development subsidies through the program and how much those tax breaks are worth.

In addition to showing that the state provides subsidies to highly profitable corporations and a casino, the list revealed that two strip clubs in the town of Rancho Cordova have been claiming EZ tax credits since at least 2010.  Gold Club Centerfolds is receiving tax breaks worth up to $37,440 apiece for nine employees, and Déjà Vu Showgirls is receiving the same deal for 13 employees.

It is unknown how many other “adult” businesses in the state are getting such tax breaks because the identities of EZ businesses are usually hidden from public scrutiny based on (clearly misplaced) taxpayer confidentiality policies.

As we blogged last week, the California EZ program is also extremely expensive, with an annual loss of state revenue now more than $700 million headed towards $1 billion.

California is not the first state to embarrass itself by subsidizing sexually-oriented businesses.  New York City provides substantial tax breaks to thousands of businesses through its Industrial and Commercial Incentive Program (ICIP).  In 2010, the New York Daily News revealed that at least three strip clubs were receiving subsidies through ICIP.  The scandal led many organizations, including Good Jobs New York, to call for an overhaul of the misguided program (NYC’s costliest).

Similarly, Pennsylvania’s Keystone Opportunity Zone program (KOZ is the state’s name for Enterprise Zones) became embroiled in considerable controversy when an “adult entertainment business” in LycomingCounty landed in a KOZ in 2005.  The business was later forced to relocate after an utterly predictable land use conflict with the nearby Little League World Series Complex, and the KOZ rules were modified to prevent strip clubs from receiving tax breaks.  Unfortunately, this eligibility rule is literally one of the only restrictions on uses of KOZ subsidies and the identities of participating businesses remain hidden from the public.

The common element these three costly programs share is secrecy: none publicly discloses recipients of the tax breaks.  Hiding government expenditures is a guaranteed recipe for waste and abuse.   Public outrage is justified when the veil of taxpayer confidentiality is lifted to reveal a subsidized strip club or other controversial enterprise.  Whether or not such uses of economic development funds are appropriate should be decided in broad daylight; without subsidy transparency, continuing scandals are inevitable.

(Comic compliments of Lalo Alcaraz, (C) 2013)

Posted in Disclosure, Enterprise Zones, New York, Subsidies | 1 Comment »

Subsidizing Union Avoidance at Wal-Mart and Nissan

June 7, 2013

walmart-strike-300x168Most Americans have been made to believe that they have no stake in private sector labor issues. Unions, we are told, are irrelevant to the working life of the vast majority of the population, whose economic fate is supposedly being determined solely by their employers or by individual skills in maneuvering through the labor market.

This narrative, however, is being challenged by organizing campaigns that are taking on two giant corporations – Wal-Mart and Nissan – and showing that collective action is not defunct. And two reports related to the campaigns show that not only the workers involved, but also taxpayers in general, have a stake in their outcome.

For the past 30 years, Wal-Mart has fought bitterly against the efforts of its employees to organize for better pay and benefits. It showed no hesitation in firing workers who supported union drives and routinely closed down operations where successful representation elections were held.

A new wave of non-traditional organizing by Making Change at Walmart and OUR Walmart has revived the prospects for change at the giant retailer. Strikes have become a frequent occurrence at Wal-Mart stores in recent weeks, and large numbers of Wal-Mart workers and their supporters have been converging on Bentonville, Arkansas to make their voices heard at the company’s annual meeting.

A recent report by the Democratic staff of the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce is a reminder that taxpayers are put in a position of subsidizing the low wages and poor benefits that the Wal-Mart campaigners are protesting. The study, which updates a 2004 report by the committee, reviews the hidden taxpayer costs stemming from the fact that many Wal-Mart workers have no choice but to use social safety net programs—such as Medicaid, Section 8 Housing, food stamps and the Earned Income Tax Credit—that were designed for individuals not in the labor force or those working for small companies that failed to provide decent compensation, not a leviathan with $17 billion in annual profits.

The Democratic staff report estimates that today the workers in a typical Wal-Mart Supercenter (Wisconsin is used as the example) make use of programs that cost taxpayers at least $904,542 a year and possibly as much as $1.7 million. Since Wal-Mart has more than 3,000 Supercenters in the U.S., plus hundreds of other types of stores, those costs run into the billions.

Nissan has been following in Wal-Mart’s footsteps in Mississippi, where it opened a large assembly plant a decade ago. The plant brought several thousand direct jobs to the state, but the problem is that many of the jobs are substandard. The company makes extensive use of temps, who are currently paid only about $12 an hour.

In response to the use of temps as well as issues concerning the conditions faced by regular employees, Nissan workers have been organizing themselves with the help of the United Auto Workers. Rather than accepting labor representation, as it does in numerous other countries, Nissan is seeking to intimidate workers using the usual toolbox of union avoidance techniques such as threats and bombarding workers with anti-union propaganda.  The workers, however, have been bolstered by strong community support from groups such as the Mississippi Alliance for Fairness at Nissan.

My colleagues and I at Good Jobs First recently issued a report commissioned by the UAW documenting the extent to which Nissan has enjoyed lavish tax breaks and other financial assistance from state and local government agencies. We found that the subsidies, which were originally estimated at around $300 million when the company first came to the state in 2000, have mushroomed to the point that they could be worth some $1.3 billion. That works out to some $290,000 per job. Noting the over-dependence on temps, we state that Mississippi taxpayers are paying “premium amounts for jobs that in many cases are far from premium.”

Although it was outside the scope of our report, it is clear that the Nissan temps, like the Wal-Mart workers, are also generating hidden taxpayer costs through their use of safety net programs. And we have previously documented that Wal-Mart frequently gets the kind of economic development subsidies Nissan is enjoying in Mississippi.

Whether through hidden taxpayer costs or job subsidies, the public is frequently put in the position of aiding companies like Wal-Mart and Nissan that disregard labor rights while failing to pay their fair share of the cost of government. Perhaps the interests of taxpayers and workers are not so different after all.

Reposted from the Dirt Diggers Digest

Share

Posted in Hidden Taxpayer Costs, Subsidies, Unions | 1 Comment »

California Enterprise Zones On the Chopping Block (Again)

June 7, 2013

CA EZsGovernor Jerry Brown has again proposed elimination of California’s much-maligned Enterprise Zone (EZ) program in order to help balance the state’s precarious budget and redirect the foregone business tax revenues to better uses.   (Gov. Brown’s previous attempt to cut the program in 2011 during a severe revenue shortfall was thwarted by business groups and localities seeking to retain the business tax breaks; the state instead eliminated municipal redevelopment agencies.)

In the past, the state has hidden the names of companies getting the EZ tax breaks of up to $37,000 per employee.  Multiple disclosure requests by Good Jobs First and other accountability-minded organizations have been denied by California’s Franchise Tax Board, which claimed tax confidentiality.   For the first time, however, recipient data has just been released by the Sacramento area Enterprise Zone administrator.

The Sacramento Bee revealed that over 6,000 employment vouchers—essentially the bounty documents for EZ tax credits—have been claimed by county businesses since 2010.  FedEx alone benefited from nearly 1,400 vouchers.  Other notable recipients include Verizon, Wells Fargo, and Walmart.  However, the most notorious enterprise zone claimants are a casino and two strip clubs in Rancho Cordova.

The EZ program is no stranger to controversy.  Policy makers have been reluctant to cut or even reform the program, even in the face of evidence that it has had zero net effect on job creation in the state.  The lost revenue currently costs the state approximately $750 million a year and is projected to grow to over $1 billion annually in coming years.  Seventy percent of those tax dollars go to companies with assets valued over $1 billion.  Even more troubling, companies can retroactively claim EZ credits for employees hired up to five years in the past—even if the person is no longer working at the company—meaning that there is literally no incentive for new job creation in order to receive the subsidy.

The state also allows companies to claim EZ credits for new hires, rather than on net new positions created.  Companies don’t need to be creative to abuse the poorly designed system.  VWR, formerly located in Brisbane, laid off 75 unionized workers and moved across the state to Visalia, where it located its new facility in an Enterprise Zone and receives tax credits for the (non-union) replacement hires.  In Anaheim, stadium concessions contractor Anaheim Arena Management recently announced it would lay off 500 workers, the replacements for which would be eligible for EZ vouchers under current program rules.

Clearly it is time for California to rethink its costly EZ program.  A program that fails to create jobs, subsidizes wealthy and abusive businesses, and incentivizes job churn cannot be called economic development.  Whether California elects to reform the program to actually create jobs or eliminates it altogether, it is past time the state made this use of economic development dollars deliver for taxpayers.

Posted in Corporate relocations, Disclosure, Enterprise Zones, Jobs, Subsidies | 1 Comment »

Examining Local Subsidy Transparency

May 30, 2013

Study: Big Cities and Counties Fail to Disclose Costly Job Subsidies

Washington, DC, May 30, 2013 — Two-thirds of the economic development subsidy programs run by the nation’s largest cities and counties do not use the web to report which companies are receiving the tax breaks and other forms of financial assistance. Among the third of programs that do practice online transparency, most do so poorly, failing to disclose the dollar value of the subsidies. An even smaller number reveal key outcomes such as how many jobs were created.

These are the central findings of a report released today by Good Jobs First, a Washington, DC-based non-profit research center on economic development accountability. The report, Show Us the Local Subsidies, is available on the Good Jobs First website at http://www.goodjobsfirst.org/localsubsidies.

“While a handful of cities enable taxpayers to see the costs and benefits of every deal, we were disappointed by the poor state of transparency in most major localities,” said Leigh McIlvaine, a research analyst at Good Jobs First and principal author of the report. “Taxpayers in those cities and counties deserve better.”

The report is part of an ongoing effort by Good Jobs First to track and promote online transparency of economic development subsidies awarded to businesses for job creation and/or retention. It is a companion to our 2010 study Show Us the Subsidies, which graded online disclosure practices by state programs. (Local governments account for about half of the $70 billion spent annually by states and cities for economic development.)

“Most major localities are far behind state governments when it comes to job-subsidy transparency,” said Good Jobs First executive director Greg LeRoy. “We hope that our new report will inspire them to improve their disclosure practices.”

Show Us the Local Subsidies looks at transparency in the country’s 25 most populous cities and 25 most populous counties. Thirty-six of those localities have locally-controlled economic development subsidy programs. One or two major programs in each were graded for a total universe of 64. Key findings:

  • Among those 64 programs, only 21 (located in 16 jurisdictions) report recipient company names online.
  • Even among those programs that do disclose, costs and benefits are mostly still missing. Only 10 of the 21 programs report the dollar value of the subsidies initially awarded, and only 6 report actual disbursements. Only 4 programs report jobs actually created, and only 9 report other outcomes such as wages.
  • The best disclosure practices are in: Memphis/Shelby County, Tennessee; New York City; Austin, Texas; and Chicago. These jurisdictions stand out for company-specific data with costs, benefits and more.
  • Among the 20 large localities still failing to disclose are Broward County (Florida), Charlotte, Cook County (Illinois), Dallas, Harris County (Texas), Los Angeles (both city and county), Miami-Dade County (Florida), Philadelphia, and San Francisco.

Good Jobs First evaluated the 21 programs with disclosure on a scale of 0 to 100 based on their inclusion of: basic recipient information; subsidy commitments; subsidy outcomes ; and user-friendliness and accessibility. Three “bonus” categories worth up to 15 additional points include: the span of disclosure years; reporting of outcomes in addition to job creation; and the use of maps to demonstrate the location of subsidized projects.

“Taxpayers have a right to know where their investments in job creation went and whether they are paying off,” McIlvaine said. “Clearly, localities can disclose such basic information, and do so in a comprehensive, intuitive, and accessible manner by embracing the best practices we document here.”

-30-

Posted in Disclosure, Subsidies | Leave a Comment »

Subsidies to Campaign Contributors in NC and DC

May 20, 2013

Two recent investigative news reports, one in North Carolina and another in District of Columbia, provide useful examples of how major campaign contributors often end up receiving substantial subsidies or special tax treatment.

Click the image to go to the WAMU website

Click the image to go to the WAMU website

The News & Observer in North Carolina published a series of articles called “Missing Money” that examined the state’s tax subsides. One of the articles looked at ties between lawmakers and subsidy recipients. For example, two large hog and poultry processors each contributed $100,000 to a state senator who introduced a bill making the materials they purchased to build their animal housing exempt from sales taxes. Although the contributions were far in excess of legal limits, the processors were not prosecuted.

WAMU, an NPR affiliate in the District of Columbia, has begun a series of reports called “Deals for Developers.” The “Day 1” part exposes connections between political campaign contributions and subsidies.

The investigation shows that one-third of the $1.7 billion in public money paid out over the last decade has gone to the ten developers who contributed the most to local political campaigns. In total, those who received subsidies contributed more than $2.5 million and received subsidies worth some $641 million.

To avoid the city’s limits on campaign donations, the radio station found that developers contributed money through multiple shell companies as well as their employees and family members. Sadly, only a small fraction of the subsidies, about five percent, went to the neediest neighborhoods in the city. (Make sure to check out the station’s table of campaign contributions and subsidies and an infographic examining the connections.)

These two investigations were possible because of the growing transparency of economic development subsidies. North Carolina has done well on Good Jobs First transparency reports and Washington, DC not too long ago started disclosing its subsides. We hope to see similar investigative reports coming from other parts of the country, but for now we congratulate The News & Observer and WAMU on their exceptional work.

Posted in Campaign contributions, Disclosure, North Carolina, Subsidies, Washington DC | 1 Comment »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »