Archive for the ‘Tax Credits’ Category

Wisconsin’s Privatized Jobs Agency Criticized Again

May 13, 2015

Audit_Bureau_Logo

The evidence continues to mount against the notion that privatized economic development agencies are a responsible means to promote state  economic development  A new audit of the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC) echoes previous findings in outlining missteps at the agency. For example, the non-partisan Legislative Audit Bureau finds that:

  • “WEDC did not report clear, accurate, and complete information on the numbers of jobs created and retained as a result of its programs.”
  • Subsidy recipients were not required to submit critical informational about job creation outcomes.
  • Subsidies were awarded to a company for jobs that had been created prior to the awarding of a tax break agreement.
  • The agency has lax implementation on wage standards.
  • A provision to steer state economic development dollars toward small businesses and rural areas was quietly eliminated in July 2014.

The audit was so embarrassing that Gov. Scott Walker dropped a plan to expand the WEDC’s authority by merging the state’s housing finance agency into it.

Despite the poor track record of agencies such as WEDC, other states including Wisconsin’s neighbor Illinois, continue to consider privatizing their state commerce agencies. They should instead heed  the lessons of Wisconsin (and Indiana, Florida, and Ohio to name a few) and acknowledge that privatization is no policy panacea.

Posted in Jobs, Privatized Economic Development Agency, Tax Credits | Leave a Comment »

New Markets for Whom?

May 11, 2015

A recent series of articles from the Portland Press Herald (see Payday at the Mill and Shrewd Financiers Exploit Unsophisticated Maine Legislators) is bringing new attention to the complex system of state level New Markets Tax Credits (NMTC). Whit Richardson’s reporting exposes how a NMTC deal that was intended to upgrade the Great Northern Paper mill in East Millinocket, Maine was exploited by out-of-state investment firms using complex financial tools. In the end, $8 million was expended on debt payments and fees with no investment made in the mill itself. A one-day loan for $32 million artificially inflated the investment to a total of $40 million, allowing the investors to cash in on a $16 million tax credit (at 39% of the total investment) payable by the state of Maine over the next 7 years.

Image Source: Portland Press Herald

The Federal NMTC program states the intent of the program as “the creation of jobs and material improvement in the lives of residents of low-income communities.” Many states, like Maine, have in recent years created state level NMTC programs, driven largely by the lobbying efforts of a handful of investment firms that benefit from these deals. And as the Maine case strongly shows, it seems it is these very firms that are benefitting from the state NMTCs, not low-income communities or the businesses that serve them.

In the weeks since Richardson’s piece legislators and others have been pushing to attach greater accountability measures to the NMTC program.

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Posted in Maine, Tax Credits | Leave a Comment »

DC Subsidy Transparency Leads to Campaign Finance Reform

March 27, 2015

On the heels of a terrific NPR-station exposé, the District of Columbia has become the first large U.S. jurisdiction to enact campaign finance reform thanks to job subsidies becoming transparent.

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In 2011, the D.C Fiscal Policy Institute convinced the DC Council to require an annual Unified Economic Development Budget (UEDB, a key Good Jobs First reform). Better than most UEDB’s that report only program costs, DC’s UEDB was how DC began online recipient disclosure for all subsidy transactions worth more than $75,000 in any fiscal year. It was a landmark moment in economic development transparency: District subsidies are now posted online in a single place for all to see.

When the data came online in 2012, WAMU reporters Julie Patel and Patrick Madden began investigating rumors that big campaign contributors were also getting big subsidies. Their 2013 series, “Deals for Developers, Cash for Campaigns,” mashed up campaign finance reports with subsidy deals. The results shocked many: over a decade, 10 big developers had given more than $2.5 million in campaign contributions to political candidates and then received nearly a third of the District’s $1.7 billion in subsidies examined. Despite strict campaign finance laws capping such donations, developers skirted the law by forming multiple LLCs and donating to candidates from each of them—the “LLC loophole.” Madden and Patel built a timeline that found such campaign donations were also timed noticeably close to subsidy award, suggesting an influence connection.

Timing of Campaign Contributions & Awarding of Subsidies (credit: WAMU)

 

So thanks to economic development transparency, the District learned it had a massive campaign finance loophole. Council members were outraged and eventually passed a bill in 2013 to close the LLC loophole. The new law went into effect in January 2015 and LLC bundling is no longer legal. Before the loophole took effect, numerous developers rushed to make significant contributions. Unfortunately, political consultants are already suggesting the law be defeated by trusted campaign staffers to run Political Action Committees (or PACs) which can take unlimited campaign contributions after the Citizens United decision.

While subsidy transparency can reveal influence and loopholes and spur officials to act, ethics in government need more than local campaign finance reforms. Mashing up subsidy disclosure data and campaign finance records can change the public discourse and allow citizens to demand greater ethics from their elected representatives.

Posted in Campaign contributions, Disclosure, Subsidies, Subsidy Tracker, Tax Credits | Leave a Comment »

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.

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

2014: A Landmark Year for Subsidy Accountability

January 14, 2015

Two-thousand fourteen was a banner year for our movement, hands down. The first move to require standardized subsidy-cost reporting! The first half of a legally-binding two-state cease fire deal! The first state ban on tax-break commissions! A big surge found in state disclosure of subsidies! Big improvements to our Subsidy Tracker, enabling first-ever mash-ups! And a governor apparently shamed to stop his partisan job piracy forays!

GASB Finally Weighs In: After a decades-long conspicuous absence, the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) announced in October that it would soon issue a draft standard to require states and localities to account for the revenue they lose to economic development tax breaks.

This is a truly tectonic event in the decades-long struggle to rein in corporate tax breaks. When states and localities start issuing the new data in 2017, we predict it will enable massive new bodies of analysis and policymaking: in state and local finance, tax policy, government transparency, economic development, regionalism and sprawl, public education finance, and campaign finance.

The day the Exposure Draft was published on October 31, we swung into action, issuing a critique of it, speaking on two webinars and answering many queries. We are posting exemplary comments here.  If you haven’t filed a comment with GASB yet, the deadline is January 30. Contact us ASAP if you need help.

FASB Enters the Debate, Too! In late December, GASB’s sister group, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), which effectively regulates private-sector bookkeeping, revealed that it too is debating whether and how to require disclosure of state and local tax breaks by the recipient corporations. The FASB process is well behind that of GASB, but this is equally tectonic.  See “Disclosures by Business Entities about Government Assistance.”

Missouri Enacts Half of a Bi-State Cease-Fire: In July, Missouri’s “red” legislature and “blue” governor agreed on legislation that is the first time a state has enacted a legally binding half of a two-state “cease fire” in the economic war among the states. Kansas has until July 2016 to reciprocate: the ball is in your court, Gov. Sam Brownback!  Credit for this victory belongs to a group of 17 Kansas City-area businesses, led by Hallmark, who went public in 2011.

Disclosure Found in 47 States plus DC: In January, we issued our latest 50-state “report card” study on state transparency of company-specific subsidy data. We found that only three states—get with it, Delaware, Idaho and Kansas!—are still failing to disclose online (more than double the 23 states we found disclosing in 2007). But we also found that reporting of actual jobs created and actual wages paid is still lagging: only one in four major state subsidy programs discloses actual job-creation outcomes and only one in eleven reports wages.

First-Ever Ban on Tax-Break Consultant Commissions: In September, California became the first state to ever ban consultant commissions on an economic development tax break. It’s a reform we have long called for and would become commonplace if states registered and regulated tax-break consultants as lobbyists.

Subsidy Tracker “2.0” Upgrade: In February, we unveiled a massive upgrade to Subsidy Tracker, linking more than 30,000 subsidy awards to their ultimate corporate parents and issuing “Subsidizing the Corporate One Percent,” showing that just 965 companies have received three-fourths of recorded subsidy dollars. Later in the year, we mashed up Tracker data with the Forbes 400 and with low-wage employers to reveal more than $21 billion in subsidies fueling economic inequality.

Perry Quits Partisan Job Piracy: 2014 was also notable for what didn’t happen. After our September 2013 study chastising Texas Gov. Rick Perry for making interstate job piracy a partisan sport and for issuing deceptive disclaimers about who funded his highly publicized trips to six states with Democratic governors (Texas taxpayers are footing part of the bill)—and a follow-up blog basically daring him to do it again—he never did, and will leave office January 20th.

Truth in TIF Taxation: In July, Cook County, Illinois started showing property taxpayers how much (in both dollars and percent) of their taxes are going to tax increment financing (TIF) districts, the largest jurisdiction known to be doing that in the U.S.

Property Tax Losses Revealed: In studies covering Chicago and Memphis, we revealed that property tax losses—either to TIF in Chicago or PILOTs in Memphis—are costing enormous sums that could be meeting other needs: 1/10th and 1/7th, respectively, of their entire property tax bases. The studies helped block a tax hike in Chicago and changed the debate in Memphis.

Privatization Slowed: Only one more state privatized its economic development agency: North Carolina. After our October 2013 study, Creating Scandals Instead of Jobs, documenting scandals nationwide, provoked editorials in three of the Tarheel State’s leading newspapers, Gov. Robert McCrory’s plans to fast-track a new privatized entity were slowed. It was later created, but with many of the safeguards we recommend if a state chooses such a structure.

Transit Investments as Economic Development Done Right: In case studies in St. Paul and Normal, Illinois, we documented the broad job-creation benefits for more than a dozen Building Trades crafts when transportation investments build transit hubs that spur massive new transit-oriented development. We even gave cautious approval to Normal’s use of a related TIF district.

It was also the year Tesla ran a five-state public auction for a battery plant. Kudos to the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada, California Budget Project, Southwest Organizing project in New Mexico, Arizona PIRG and Texans for Public Justice who staged a high-profile outcry with us, calling out Tesla for its Old Economy whipsawing behavior. Ultimately, Nevada overspent for the trophy deal at $1.3 billion and will go down in history as the birthplace of what we dubbed the “tax credit capture zone,” a new benchmark for tax-break greed.

Almost a Record Year for “Megadeals.” As we found in an update of our “Megadeals” study and entries in our Subsidy Tracker database: we now have 298 such deals documented over $60 million and some over $1 billion. Only 2013, with its record Boeing megadeal of $8.7 billion, cost more than 2014.

Finally, 2014 was the year we said goodbye to Bettina Damiani after her stunning 13-year streak of achievements at Good Jobs New York: the best local disclosure law in the country (won in 2005 and later improved); an online database of >41,000 deals; a radical overhaul of the process by which the NYC IDA relates to the public (enabling project interventions from diverse grassroots groups); $11 million in improper rent deductions disgorged by the New York Yankees; a racetrack defeated on Staten Island wetlands; and assistance to hundreds of community groups, unions, environmentalists and journalists challenging the status quo. One of Bettina’s tangible legacies: the space for new mayor Bill de Blasio to do things like saying no to JP Morgan Chase’s demand for $1 billion to move across Manhattan (with our database documenting its huge past subsidies and job shortfalls).

If you like what we do, please support Good Jobs First: we have a lot in the works for 2015, too!

Posted in California, Corporate relocations, GASB, Job Piracy, Kansas, Missouri, New York, Privatized Economic Development Agency, Property Taxes, Smart Growth, Subsidies, Subsidy Tracker, Tax Credits, Texas, Transit, war among the states, Yankee Stadium | Leave a Comment »

GASB Finally Prepares to Step Up! And Who is GASB, You Ask?

October 7, 2014

For many years, we at Good Jobs First have criticized GASB—the Governmental Accounting Standards Board, or “GAZ-bee”— for failing to require state and local governments to disclose economic development subsidy spending in a uniform way.

It appears that’s finally about to change, and if it does, it will be hard to overstate the significance of the news.

As the group that has been successfully shaming states and cities to disclose on subsidies all these years, with our 50-state and 50-locality “report card” studies, and as the group that has been collecting all the public data—and also lots of previously unpublished data—in our Subsidy Tracker database, we are intimately familiar with the irregularities and gaps that exist in these vital public records. And we have long shown how to fix them in our model legislation.

First, a quick primer on GASB: it is the public-sector counterpart to the Financial Accounting Standards Board, or FASB, which issues private-sector accounting rules. Each body oversees its respective set of rules, which are constantly under review and improvement, known as Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, or GAAP.

Adhering to GASB, cities, counties, states (and other government bodies such as school boards and sewer districts) must account for their finances in conformity to GAAP if they want to receive ratings from the major credit ratings agencies (Moody’s, Standard & Poors, Fitch), which they must earn if they wish to sell bonds.

The same is true for corporations of all kinds if they wish to satisfy shareholders, sell debt, or even get foundation grants. Indeed, Good Jobs First’s auditors have to certify us as GAAP compliant in our annual financial statement. All of which is to say: the influence of GASB and FASB is enormous and ubiquitous; they are the arbiters of sound United States bookkeeping standards that protect investors, taxpayers, and consumers every day. (Both are part of the non-profit Financial Accounting Foundation.)

Now, GASB is preparing rules that say: to meet GAAP, governments will have to publish an annual accounting of the revenue lost to economic development subsidies. The proposed wording of these rules has not been issued; all we have are board-meeting minutes of a low-profile process spanning more than two years, as GASB gathers information and debates how best to achieve this new standard.

GASB is using the term “tax abatement” as an umbrella term (not just specific to local property tax exemptions) but “a reduction in taxes… in which (a) one or more governmental entities forgo tax revenues that [an individual] taxpayer otherwise would have been obligated to pay and (b) the taxpayer promises to take a specific action that contributes to economic development or otherwise benefits the government(s) or its citizens.” This would appear to also cover state corporate income tax credits and state or local sales tax exemptions, but apparently not tax increment financing.

As part of that process, GASB even commissioned a survey that included citizens groups, county board members and bond analysts. Tellingly, the bond analysts said they are most keen to see both current and future-year costs. For cities like Memphis, where we recently found that Payments in Lieu of Taxes (or PILOTs) cost the city almost one-seventh of its property tax revenue, such losses are apparently becoming bigger concerns for bond investors.

GASB will have a three-month comment period on its proposed rules starting next month (November).

For all the cost-benefit debates featuring inflated ripple-effect claims that beg the more fundamental issue of cause and effect, we have always said: the only thing that can be said for sure is that development subsidies are very expensive, so costly that they undermine funding for public goods that benefit all employers. Therefore, at the very least, taxpayers have the right to know the exact price of every deal and every program (and the outcome of every company-specific deal). GASB now appears to be moving to make some form of standardized disclosure of tax-break costs a reality for reporting periods after December 15, 2015 (and sooner on a voluntary basis).

Some important details remain to be clarified. Based on the board minutes, it appears that GASB will propose giving governments the option of disclosing individual deals or only programs costs in the aggregate (the latter option would be far inferior). We’ll know for sure when the draft standards are published sometime this month. Good Jobs First will publish a detailed analysis of the draft when it comes out.

But for now, the big picture is simply huge: the body that effectively controls how taxpayer dollars are accounted for is finally catching up to the Wild West of record-keeping known as economic development incentives.

Posted in Corporate Income Taxes, Disclosure, GASB, Jobs, Property Taxes, Sales Tax, Subsidies, Subsidy Tracker, Tax Credits, Tax Expenditure Budgets, Taxes, war among the states | 2 Comments »