DMI and Corporate Giveaways

DMI blog has audio and video online from a roundtable the Institute conducted last month about increasing accountability for economic development subsidies.

The featured speaker was Minnesota State Senator John Hottinger, who "sponsored Minnesota’s groundbreaking law instituting new standards of transparency and accountability for state and local economic development subsidies. The 1995 law and its subsequent enhancements required that companies who receive public subsidies but fail to reach job creation goals repay the subsidy with interest."


Adrianne Shropshire and Assemblyman Brodsky

The panelists were Hottinger, columnist and Atlantic Yardsist Errol Louis (boo!), Jobs with Justice's Adrianne Shropshire (yay!), and State Assemblyman Richard Brodsky (good on this issue).

Here at Left Behinds we discuss corporate subsidies all the time. We have focused on the land giveaways, but the same problems apply to economic development subsidies (i.e., millions and millions of dollars of corporate welfare) supposedly spent to keep corporate jobs in the City, even though the jobs are often never generated and the money is seldom recouped. Who makes an investment in which you're almost guaranteed to lose money?

I personally hope this is the beginning of a campaign to advocate for legislation like Minnesota's, which has led to millions of dollars recouped from reneging corporations. It's good goverment and not anti-development, just anti-waste.