
{"id":849,"date":"2007-09-06T05:43:16","date_gmt":"2007-09-06T13:43:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/2007\/09\/06\/exile-on-jones-street-90607\/"},"modified":"2007-09-06T05:43:16","modified_gmt":"2007-09-06T13:43:16","slug":"exile-on-jones-street-90607","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/2007\/09\/06\/exile-on-jones-street-90607\/","title":{"rendered":"Exile on Jones Street: 9\/06\/07"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em>By Kirk Ross\u00c2\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The General Assembly is contemplating a return engagement in Raleigh next week with the intent of taking up Gov. Mike Easley\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s veto of an incentives bill for the Goodyear Tire &amp; Rubber Company.<\/p>\n<p>Easley\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s objection, which reportedly came as a shocking twist to legislators after a two-year negotiation over the package, was that the threshold for the number of jobs the bill would protect was reduced.<\/p>\n<p>Easley points out that Goodyear could lay off 25 percent of its workforce \u00e2\u20ac\u201d 700 or more jobs \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and still pocket the cash. In his succinct veto message, the governor does not mince words.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>He opens with: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153House Bill 1761 would set a dangerous precedent for North Carolina\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s economic development policy and is not fair to her taxpayers.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>Backers of the bill, which passed 98-11 in the House and 41-5 in the Senate, dispute the governor\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s premise and say the number of jobs was a compromise reached after advocates for a Bridgestone Firestone plant in Wilson raised concerns about the job threshold.<\/p>\n<p>In raising his objection and then offering an alternative plan for helping businesses, the governor has not only inspired the return of the Legislature, he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s also touched off another debate on the value and repercussions of incentives.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Never in the history of the state,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Easley says in his veto message, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153has anyone given a company up to $40 million and allowed them to lay off hundreds of workers.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>Not yet, anyway. But it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s easy to see that in the current (ahem) \u00e2\u20ac\u0153pro-business\u00e2\u20ac\u009d climate, expanding criteria for payouts to corporations could be a hard trend to stop. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s also rife with pitfalls, not the least of which is the fact that PAC donations are the mother\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s milk of politics.<\/p>\n<p>The intersection of corporate incentives and corporate donations is not a pretty place and can lead to a distorted sense of what constitutes an \u00e2\u20ac\u0153incentive\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and a need for one.<\/p>\n<p>Goodyear, for instance, just recently announced that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s paying down nearly $1 billion in debt and planning new plants overseas. The Wall Street Journal\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s headline on the story after its latest quarterly report in early August is \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Goodyear profit surges on cost-cutting, global sales.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>Still, they apparently would like an average of $5 each from every man, woman and child in North Carolina to help modernize their plant here. They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll likely get something close to what they want, and in doing so could set in motion efforts by scores of others seeking similar dispensation.<\/p>\n<p>Before we go down that road, though, bring on another debate over the consequences.<\/p>\n<p>If you look at the latest Forbes survey of best places for business, this state ranks very favorably in the business-cost category (we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re 6th), which takes into account taxes and labor and energy costs, and in regulatory environment (we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re 2nd), which measures regulatory and tort climate, incentives, transportation and bond ratings. Where we rank lowest (30th) is in the quality-of-life category, which is an index of schools, health, crime, cost of living and poverty rates.<\/p>\n<p>When the state really ramped up its incentive efforts about ten years ago, they were sold as a necessary evil to preserve jobs and recruit new industries to replace the ones we were losing. A better business climate, we were told, would benefit us all. Since then, incentives have certainly improved the bottom line for corporations in North Carolina, but the ripple effect has yet to reach us all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Kirk Ross\u00c2\u00a0 The General Assembly is contemplating a return engagement in Raleigh next week with the intent of taking up Gov. Mike Easley\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s veto of an incentives bill for the Goodyear Tire &amp; Rubber Company. Easley\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s objection, which reportedly came as a shocking twist to legislators after a two-year negotiation over the package, was&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=849"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/849\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}