Good Jobs First Blog
Georgia Whiffs, Bernalillo County Homers on Tax-Break Disclosures!
As states and localities finally start to disclose how much revenue they lose to corporate welfare (thanks to GASB Statement 77*), we continue to see laggards and leaders.
Today we spotlight Georgia (which has failed to comply, claiming taxpayer confidentiality for numbers that have long been public) and Bernalillo
GASB 77 Data: Starting to Make Headlines -- Or Not
As we approach the first tsunami of GASB Statement 77 Tax Abatement Disclosure* data, Good Jobs First is already seeing some big differences in data quality from various states. Of special interest is Statement 77's requirement that governments report the tax revenue they lose passively, as the result of
Investigating Those 238 Bids for Amazon's HQ2
There's a terrific new resource to facilitate investigative journalism and citizen activism on those 238 Amazon HQ2 project bids!
We encourage everyone interested to visit and utilize MuckRock's website: https://www.muckrock.com/project/america-bids-on-amazon-175/
That page includes a list of more than 100 Freedom of Information Act requests (FOIAs) MuckRock has filed with local
A GASB 77 Tale of Two States
October 25, 2017
With new government financial reports arriving daily, we’ve been busy collecting GASB 77 subsidy data and posting it in our new Subsidy Tracker 2 database.
We are also taking note of trends and contrasts in transparency reporting. One of the most interesting contrasts involves the reporting
Putting State Pension Costs in Context: many states give away more in subsidies than normal cost of pensions for state employees
Our latest report, "Putting State Pension Costs in Context" focuses on 13 states where pensions have been debated. We compare those costs to the amount of revenue those states lose each year as the result of economic development subsidies offered to corporations as well as the tax preferences and accounting loopholes (including offshore