Posts Tagged Transparency

The Oscar season is upon us, when many of us want to forget the grim news and enjoy movies that can take us to a new reality. On Sunday, we will make ourselves comfortable to celebrate those films. But when we do, let’s not forget that the movies we honor were supported with public money, our money.

President Biden announced in this State of the Union Address that the Department of Justice will appoint a chief prosecutor responsible for investigating pandemic fraud.  

We posted a new version of Subsidy Tracker, Good Jobs First’s database of company-specific subsidy awards from state and local governments across the country as well as federal agencies. During this round of updates, we added over 17,000 entries from 112 state and local programs from 28 states. We also updated the federal programs. We also added nine megadeals.

Your state and local government’s files on economic development subsidies are just that—your files.

For decades, the public had no meaningful way of knowing how much schools lost via government subsidies given to corporations as part of “economic development”. We could reasonably assume it was substantial: property taxes are the biggest source of public school funding, so giving corporations a pass on paying some or all of it inevitably hits schools the hardest.