Good Jobs First Subsidy News

By Matt Krantz

You're supposed to be able to trust your bank. But multimillion-dollar settlements, tens of thousands of customer complaints and class-action lawsuits make that tough.

By Len Boselovic

Pennsylvania taxpayers are providing $1.65 billion in incentives for Shell’s Beaver County ethane cracker plant, but they will have to share benefits generated by the project with other states, according to an expert on government subsidies who spoke Friday at Carnegie Mellon University.

Tony Cook, The Indianapolis Star

As Donald Trump’s running mate, Gov. Mike Pence is campaigning for a man who has promised to penalize companies that ship jobs overseas.

But since Pence became governor in 2013, the state has awarded millions of dollars in economic development incentives to companies that have moved production to foreign countries such as Mexico and China. Those production shifts have cost thousands of Hoosiers their jobs during Pence’s time in office.

Tomorrow, the Baltimore City Council will hold its second hearing on the multi-billion-dollar taxpayer subsidy for Port Covington, the new "city within a city" proposed by Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank; interest in the first hearing last week was so strong, it had to be moved to a larger room to accommodate the roughly 500 people who showed up. The stakes could not be higher: As the costliest development proposal in our city's history, it will shape Baltimore for generations to come, both through the 45 new city blocks it would create and its effect on development in the 92 square miles we already have.

By David Nicklaus, May 11, 2016

Area governments have provided more than $2 billion of subsidies to retail developers in the past couple of decades, but metropolitan St. Louis has the same number of people working in retailing as it did in 1990.