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