Good Jobs First Blog

Local economic development departments are so eager to fertilize job creation in their communities that they often grow low-wage jobs that are detrimental to their economic landscape. Too often, localities (cities or counties) provide funding to employers that promise to create jobs but fail to ask: Will these positions be full-time? Pay minimum-wage or a living-wage?

An incredible community-labor mobilization in Baltimore has tied up what would be the third-biggest private-sector tax increment financing (TIF) deal in U.S. history.

Whether or not it is a good idea to increase subsidies for renewable energy, one thing is certain: we need to stop giving them to fossil-fuel companies and start charging dirty energy for their “externalities,” i.e., the costs of carbon and other pollutant emissions.

Washington, DC, June 28, 2016-- Since the beginning of 2010, two dozen major U.S. and foreign-based banks have paid more than $160 billion in U.S. penalties to resolve a wide range of cases brought against them by the Justice Department and federal regulatory agencies. Bank of America alone accounts for $56 billion of the total and JPMorgan Chase another $28 billion. Fourteen banks have each accumulated penalty amounts (both fines and settlements) in excess of $1 billion, and five of those are in excess of $10 billion.

Exercising discretionary authority his predecessors always had, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards last Friday issued an executive order reforming the most notorious property tax abatement program in the United States.