20/12/2015
Washington, DC–Good Jobs First's Subsidy Tracker is more valuable than ever, thanks to an extensive update and enhancement of the unique database. Access to the database is free and unrestricted at
goodjobsfirst.org/subsidy-tracker
.
The update adds nearly 30,000 new entries from 160 state and local programs, and 138 federal ones. The states with the most new entries are Washington, Michigan, Maine and Oklahoma, but New Jersey accounts for the largest dollar amount, with more than $1.5 billion in new giveaways over the past year.
These additions bring the total inventory of the database to more than 480,000 subsidy awards, of which 302,000 are state and local, and 178,000 are federal. Altogether, the awards are worth more than $155 billion in special tax breaks, grants and other financial assistance to the private sector.
Subsidy Tracker's proprietary parent-subsidiary matching system links the companies receiving the individual subsidy awards to their ultimate corporate parents, giving users a more complete picture of where the taxpayer money is going. Subsidy summaries are now available for more than 2,000 large companies. "Our parent summary pages are the most complete information source available on the amount of corporate welfare going to big businesses,"
said Good Jobs First Research Director Philip Mattera, who heads the work on Subsidy Tracker.
In addition to the additional entries, Subsidy Tracker has two new features: links on the parent summary pages to the corresponding pages on the
Violation Tracker
database introduced in October by the Corporate Research Project of Good Jobs First and a new search box covering parent company industry groups.
"Governments at all levels have made improvements in subsidy disclosure," said Greg LeRoy, Good Jobs First's Executive Director. "Yet there are still many laggards, and reporting on outcomes such as job creation still has a long way to go." Good Jobs First's most recent 50-state "report card" study on subsidy transparency is
here
.
-30-