Good Jobs First Subsidy News

By Lisa Mckinney, The Council of State Governments

This year, states will have the opportunity to better evaluate the efficacy and value of tax incentives designed to attract, expand and retain business activity in their states with the implementation of the Governmental Accounting Standards Board’s Statement 77, or GASB 77, which for the first time requires state and local governments to disclose in their financial statements how much revenue was lost to tax abatements for economic development.

By Mark Niesse, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Over the objection of a school system that insisted children would pay the price, economic development officials last year granted tax breaks worth more than $250 million to a company that wants to transform an old General Motors site in Doraville into a mix of offices, retail and housing.

In Atlanta, UPS, the world’s largest package delivery company, also was negotiating $28 million in tax breaks for a new logistics facility that will employ 1,000 low-paid workers.

By Jim Heaney and Charlotte Keith, Albany Times-Union

New York has seemingly tried every which way to jump-start its upstate economy.

Governor after governor proposed what they considered the answer to upstate's economic woes, but program after program came up short.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo was determined to change that when he took office in 2011. Cuomo has increased state subsidies, launched several bold initiatives and crisscrossed the state to announce state-funded projects he frequently described as "game-changers."

By Michael J. Bologna, Bloomberg/BNA

Online retail giant Amazon.com Inc. is about to set a record that few in the tax policy arena thought would ever be achieved.

Amazon, the national leader in e-commerce sales, is expected to vault past a record for state and local tax subsidies held for many years by Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the undisputed king of brick-and-mortar retail sales.

By Mike Macieg, Governing

When it comes to tax breaks for economic development, following the money has never been easy.

Thanks to new accounting rules, states and localities have to disclose how much revenue they lose to such deals. But a new report finds that most of the nation’s largest local governments fail to reveal other basic information online, like what companies are benefiting, how much money they receive or whether they deliver on promises to create jobs.