Good Jobs First Subsidy News
By Greg LeRoy, Fast Company
The biggest jobs deal yet to be announced during the new presidential administration exemplifies everything that’s wrong with our nation’s economic development system.
The tone was giddy as President Donald Trump himself headlined a July 26 White House event to announce that Taiwanese electronics maker Foxconn will build a large new plant in southeastern Wisconsin. Warming up the crowd were Foxconn chairman Terry Gou, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, and House Speaker Paul Ryan, in whose Congressional District the plant will likely reside.
By Greg LeRoy, CNBC
Then-candidate Donald Trump made American jobs a hyper-politicized issue, and even though unemployment is low, it's still big news when Carrier lays off workers in Indiana or when Taiwanese electronics giant Foxconn eyes Midwestern states to possibly create thousands of new jobs.
States and localities spend aggressively to lure private investment: one academic study estimated $70 billion per year — and that was before the Great Recession prompted some governors and mayors to double down on tax-break offers.
By Greg LeRoy in Bloomberg/BNA Daily Tax Report
As of early June, more than a dozen local governments have issued Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports (CAFRs) reporting for the first time how much revenue they lost to economic development tax break programs. Some of these early disclosures are overly narrow, others are needlessly difficult to decipher—and a few go far beyond the basic requirements, providing taxpayers and investors outstanding new information.
By Julie Carr Smyth, The Associated Press
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Want to know how much money governments give away in corporate tax breaks? Good luck.
For years, the figure has been incredibly difficult to calculate. That’s because states, cities and other government units haven’t been directed to uniformly report the value attached to the various tax incentives, abatements and financing deals they agree to as a way of stimulating economic growth.
A major accounting shift taking place across the U.S. now is changing things.
By MIchael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times
A few years ago, Washington state awarded the Boeing Co. the largest corporate tax break any state had given any corporation — a massive $8.7-billion handout aimed at encouraging the aerospace industry generally, and Boeing specifically, “to maintain and grow its workforce within the state.”
Unwisely, state legislators and Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee didn’t make that a hard and fast requirement of the handout. So they’ve had to stand by powerlessly as the company has cut 12,655 jobs, or more than 15% of its Washington workforce, since that heady signing ceremony in November 2013.