Will leadership fiddle while the economy burns?
Published January 9, 2015
Editorial by Fayetteville Observer, January 9, 2015.
Will leadership fiddle while the economy burns? That may happen when the new session of the General Assembly opens next month.
Gov. Pat McCrory is telling anyone who'll listen that he doesn't have the money to make competitive incentive offers to industries considering North Carolina.
But legislative leaders say they're in no rush to hand more tax dollars over to job-recruiting initiatives. There will be hearings and deliberations, but the check is definitely not in the mail.
At an economic-forecast forum on Monday, McCrory told business leaders that, "I need you to help me work with the General Assembly to get a new strategic program in place, and this has to be done in literally a matter of weeks if we're going to continue to have success. This has to be the No. 1 priority in the first two weeks of this legislative session."
The governor also said he hasn't been able to make substantive offers to companies looking at North Carolina because there's not enough money in funds that help employers move here.
The day after McCrory made those remarks, Mercedes-Benz USA announced it was moving its corporate headquarters to Atlanta. The luxury automaker had been looking at sites in Charlotte and the Triangle for its main office, but it appears North Carolina's incentives package didn't measure up to Georgia's. The company will about 1,000 workers from New Jersey to Atlanta.
House and Senate lawmakers say they're going to study incentive programs this year, but discussions of Medicaid expansion and education funding will come first.
But we know the General Assembly is capable of multitasking. Witness the flood of bills that get action in the two weeks before adjournment.
We're worried about more than Mercedes' 1,000 jobs. The end of historic-building restoration tax credits has brought an end to countless urban renewal projects across the state - such as a local effort to buy and reuse the decaying Hotel Prince Charles in downtown Fayetteville. Drastic cuts in the state's film-industry incentives have driven North Carolina projects to other states, siphoning millions of Hollywood dollars out of our economy.
Legislative antipathy toward incentive programs is no surprise. The giveaways needed to lure new business are painful at best. But they are the way the game is played. If all other factors are equal, they're the tiebreaker.
Let's avoid bidding wars, but we can't afford to take ourselves out of the game.
