Press Releases

Washington, DC, July 10, 2014 – The most common form of job piracy-among neighboring localities in the same metro area-can be ended, as agreements in the Denver and Dayton metro areas have proved for decades. The agreements prohibit active recruitment within the metro area, and they require communication and transparency between affected development officials if a company signals it might move.

Those are the main conclusions of a new study released today by Good Jobs First. “Ending Job Piracy, Building Regional Prosperity,” is online at www.goodjobsfirst.org.

With Parent-Subsidiary Ties Linked, Database Reveals Big-Business Dominance of Job Subsidies

Washington, DC, February 25, 2014—Three-quarters of all the economic development dollars awarded and disclosed by state and local governments throughout the United States have gone to just 965 large corporations.

Some of these big recipients, such as Boeing (at more than $13 billion) are well known for aggressively seeking tax breaks by pitting states against each other for jobs. However, 16 other companies, many less intuitive, have received awards totaling more than $1 billion, often to subsidiaries with names bearing no similarity to their corporate parents.

“Show Us the Subsidized Jobs” Ranks the States

Report: Nearly All States Disclose Some Development Deals, But Outcome Reporting Remains Mostly Poor

January 29, 2014—All but four states now post at least partial information online showing which companies are receiving economic development subsidies. But the quality and depth of that disclosure varies widely, both among and within states. Three-fourths of major state development programs still fail to disclose actual jobs created or workers trained, and only one in eleven discloses wages actually paid. The best disclosure practices are found in Illinois and Michigan, but even their scores would be near-failing as report card grades.

These are the key findings of Show Us the Subsidized Jobs, a report issued today by Good Jobs First, a non-profit, non-partisan research center based in Washington, DC.

Report: Privatized State Development Agencies Create Scandals Instead of Jobs

Analysis of Arizona, Florida, Indiana, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Rhode Island, Texas, and Wisconsin gives other states roadmaps to avoid

Washington D.C., October 23, 2013 – Three years ago, newly elected governors in several states decided to outsource economic development functions to “public-private partnerships” (PPPs). Together with a handful of other states’ PPPs, these experiments in privatization have, by and large, become costly failures characterized by misuse of taxpayer funds, conflicts of interest, excessive executive pay and bonuses, questionable subsidy awards, exaggerated job-creation claims, lack of public disclosure of key records, and resistance to basic oversight.

Those are the cautionary conclusions of a study issued today by Good Jobs First, a non-profit, non-partisan research center.  The report looks at eight states with existing PPPs and one more proposed.  “Creating Scandals Instead of Jobs: The Failures of Privatized State Economic Development Agencies” is available at www.goodjobsfirst.org/scandalsnotjobs. It is a follow-up to a study issued in February 2011 when four states moved to create new PPPs.