Gov. McCrory’s announcement yesterday to shift the state’s economic development functions to a “private” nonprofit leaves many questions to be answered.
- How would this impact the level of transparency of the state’s corporate welfare deals (which has so far been very poor)?
- What would this mean to the seven regional economic development “partnership” organizations (along with a host of other related organizations)?
- What about the NC Rural Economic Development Center, a group receiving tens of millions of taxpayer dollars annually?
- What impact would this have on the Golden LEAF Foundation – a highly redundant group of political cronies sitting on $600-$700 million and still getting tens of millions annually in tobacco settlement money – which claims to be active in “economic development” grants?
- Would this new organization be charged with handling state corporate welfare programs like the One North Carolina Fund, JDIG, etc.?
But most importantly, the question remains: why does Gov. McCrory want to continue North Carolina’s sad and highly unpopular practice of granting corporate welfare and political privilege to a select few companies while imposing comparatively high tax rates on those who are not politically connected?
A better “economic development” plan would be to treat all businesses the same, lower state-imposed regulations on businesses and eliminate job-killing income taxes.
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