Greg LeRoy, author of The Great American Jobs Scam and founder of Good Jobs First, a nationwide non profit that has been demanding accountability for years, has been studying incentives nationwide and while I'll admit the MSNBC reporters did try to play this as a Liberal vs Conservative issue (it's not) Mr Leroy presents the facts that incentives to large corporations simply do not work.
As a matter of fact, Mr LeRoy recently pointed to 2 polls of small business owners:
"The large poll, conducted by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance and Advocates for Independent Business, surveyed 2,602 small business owners nationwide. It asked them which two public policy changes would most help their business. Their single most common reply (36 percent) was “eliminate public subsidies for big companies.”
Imagine that?
Last week I sent the following Public Information Request to the City of Greensboro but several of my e-mails to the city bounced during the snow storm so on February 19, 2014 I sent it again:
"I didn't get confirmation and since some of my e-mails to city servers bounced during the snow last week I feared you might not have gotten this one sent previously. -Billy
"There are times when it is necessary to give incentives to private companies to provide the necessary infrastructure to grow the economy and provide services necessary to society that private industry might not have the capital to provide. Building a bigger tax base is not one of those necessities. As a matter of fact, the City of Greensboro is unable to provide any evidence that building a bigger tax base actually benefits the community overall. I challenge the Greensboro City Council and City Staff to show us proof that increasing Greensboro's tax base actually benefits the community overall."
http://greensboroperformingarts.blogspot.com/2014/02/incentives-in-greensboro-part-24.html "
Sarah got back to me quickly:
"Billy:
Thank you for sending this and I will work on getting a response for you.
We will be in touch.
Sincerely,
Sarah"
Some people think it is too much to ask City Staff to justify the actions and policy of City Council. I, on the other hand, know that Greensboro is run by a strong city manager form of government. Methinks Council are in-effect elected puppets out to get what they can get. I do expect an answer. More importantly, I believe Greensboro taxpayers deserve an answer.
And even if I'm wrong about who pulls the strings and makes the decisions Greensboro has been giving out incentives long enough so that if our leaders on City Staff and on the Council were really interested in knowing if incentives actually work the City of Greensboro should have enough information on hand to prove that "increasing Greensboro's tax base actually benefits the community overall.
They're not going to be able to prove it. For starters I don't believe they've kept records as they never expected anyone to ask. In January I asked for records of the last 10 years of incentives and haven't gotten that yet. Secondly, economic development "gurus" across the nation are struggling with these very questions and all of them are coming up short. If they send me answers at all it will most likely be answers to questions I didn't ask. You know, like they did yesterday in my post, More Lies From The Greensboro City Council. When people continually refuse to answer the questions you ask choosing instead to replace your questions with questions more to their liking, they're lying.
And we all know that to be true.
Who wants to bet this will be a repeat of the East Market Street Streetscaping boondoogle when I asked the City:
"The City of Greensboro completed a streetscaping project on East Market St in 2008. It was said such a project would improve the economy of East Greensboro and East Market Street in particular. Please provide to myself and my publisher, Rick Baker, whose e-mail address is above, any and all data indicating what positive economic benefit East Greensboro, East Market Street and Greensboro as a whole has received from the East Market St streetscaping project to date."
Only to get the following reply from the City of Greensboro:
"We apologize that your request has taken so long to complete. We have requested several departments to review your request to see if they had any information pertaining to your request. Unfortunately, the City has not measured the economic impact directly attributable to the East Market Street streetscape project."
You see, they have, for so long enjoyed such a cozy relationship with the local mainstream media, regulators and developers that they've forgotten the need to remain accountable. Then the Internet, social networking and a few bloggers came along and fucked the whole thing up. And they think that's our fault.
Please continue reading Incentives In Greensboro: 27: Going Down The List
