Dodging the bullet in the Boeing deal
Published January 11, 2014
By Becki Gray
by Becki Gray, John Locke Foundation and NC SPIN panelist, January 10, 2014.
In Greensboro’s recent negotiations to try to bribe lure Boeing to NC, it has been disclosed they offered free land, site prep work at no charge and additional rail access. Where would the money come from? Why, taxpayers of course. But no need to worry about that little detail apparently. We’ve seen it before and here it is again. From a Triad Business Journal report:
All told, the incentives certainly would have run into millions of dollars, likely tens of millions, but The Business Journal has not yet ascertained an exact total. Exactly where funding for the offer would come from wasn’t known, even to those who put it together, partly because of the short time period for preparing the proposal and meeting Boeing’s deadline.
“We just knew we had to make it happen, and we had support from elected local leadership to put all of the pieces in places,” Lynch said.
Greensboro didn’t get the deal. Charlotte tried as well with offers of “304 acres of property inside the boundaries of Charlotte Douglas International Airport, and then…another 100 acres of adjacent land with the 27 buildings.”
Ultimately Boeing decide to stay in Washington after all. But not without massive efforts to give away gobs of North Carolina taxpayers’ hard earned money.
This time we dodged the bullet but there’s always a next time – and more of your money to give away – in the great incentives game.
January 11, 2014 at 10:27 am
Norm Kelly says:
First, it was stupid of the unions to try to drive Boeing out of Washington. But that statement was redundant. Unions normally do self-defeating, stupid things. But the entire state of Washington would have been losers if Boeing were allowed to leave.
Thankfully it is the citizens of Washington that will have to pay to keep Boeing. I'm tickled pink that NC lost all it's bids. How in the world are we supposed to pay for such lavish gifts? Why do elected and non-elected people feel so free to give our hard-earned money away? I'm doing my best to live on a budget so I have some money left at the end of the month, so I can build a reserve. I'm trying to make sure I can afford auto repairs when needed (note: that's not IF needed!). I'm trying to make sure that when the libs cause the price of home heating/cooling to skyrocket, I can afford it. When the libs do what they can to reduce my supply of gas for my autos, when they force the price to rise, I need to have money set aside to pay for it. When the libs get their way and raise taxes to continue to pay benefits to their base, I need to have money to pay for all this. How do we support these give-aways to businesses also? How does my budget expand to fit in this expense as well?
Yes, it would be nice to have another large business move to NC, hire local people, pay local taxes, pay state taxes, generally generate business here in NC. But if the net is that it costs us to have that business here, then it's not an advantage for us. When it becomes a drain, it's a bad idea. But it appears the politicians and government employees do NOT understand this. Some in government want to continue to pick 'winners and losers'. Why do we let them get away with this? Why don't we prosecute them for financial mismanagement, just like someone in a private business would have happen if they were so careless with other people's money? The least we could do is remove them from office, or if an employee have their contract negated.
January 11, 2014 at 10:50 pm
John Smithson says:
Yes, I am sure the citizens and leaders of both Greensboro and Charlotte are breathing easier by not having one of the largest and most respected corporations in the world locating a plant for their newest generation passenger jet in their cities. Whew! That was close. We almost had thousands of well-paying jobs for the next thirty to fifty years locate in our state. This is to say nothing about the companies that would supply and service this plant. With backers like Becky and the John Locke Foundation, I am not very optimistic about the chances of North Carolina landing new industry of any substantial size. Boeing. Wow, that was close.
January 15, 2014 at 5:45 pm
Alan Ferguson says:
John,
The cost of landing Boeing was too high. There is not a shred of evidence supporting the notion that bribing (yes, "bribing") the world's most profitable entities to come here to screw machines together is a long-term win for us. But the billions that would have been paid to bring them in would have been very real, and an unavoidable loss to this state and its taxpayers. And my state seems to have done quite well over the past decades in continuing to outpace its neighbors who have been so eager to play the incentives game. Don't believe me, look at any economic comparisons of us to Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia or South Carolina.
You are correct, it was quite a relief that when the curtain fell on Boeing's bit of kabuki theatre they chose to stay with their state patrons in Washington.
Alan Ferguson
Randolph County, NC
January 15, 2014 at 5:58 pm
Alan Ferguson says:
I could not agree more that local government has no business getting into the development business. Local government seems to have forgotten that it is there to provide essential services to its citizens and businesses. These "field of dreams", tax-payer funded mega-development projects like the bribe-you-to-come Boeing offer are indeed far, far outside their expertise. The fiasco that is the "Global Transpark" is an apt example of the likely result.
Most important, however, if these county or municipal "developers" fail, they suffer no consequences. If I lose a bet on a business decision, I lose lots of my own money, I may have no income, and I may find myself in bankruptcy court. Those who gamble with tax dollars just move on to the next project.
The Boeing expenditure would have been about as bad as it gets for the taxpayers, but it has lots of company from other current bad proposals. Here in Randolph County, we have our own field-of-dreams project, the proposed Greensboro-Liberty Megasite. The Greensboro, our Piedmont Triad Partnership, the State Department of Commerce and Randolph County are conspiring to put together a $600 million "megasite" in northeastern Randolph County. Our new publicly-funded land speculators hope to then compose a site composed of 2000 farm and residential acres on which I and my neighbors live, and which, by the way, we do not want to sell. This is all for the purpose of creating an "inventory" of available industrial sites to offer to GIVE to the first corporation which comes along and promises to "produce jobs". Of course, they will have to really, really promise to produce lots and lots of jobs--you know, like Dell and Fed Ex did recently in our area.
The $600 million will be entirely city, county (Randolph and Guilford) and state money. Again, there is NO actual demand for our property by a company wanting to come here and begin operations. Reading of the support of projects of this kind by so-called "conservatives" is particularly distressing.This is corporate welfare and corporate cronyism in its purest forms.
We have been fighting this nonsense down here in Randolph for over a year now through our organization, Northeast Randolph Property Owners. We are only little people, fighting all of the majesty and power of local and state government, but we are incorporated, and we are in the fight to the end to stop this. All of our details are at nomegasitehere.com or at northeastrandolphpropertyowners.com. Anyone who looks at our information will find a number of facts and figures there in support of your position in your essay. We are in an out-gunned fight against those in power who are doing their best to destroy what little we have played by the rules and worked so hard for so long to have. All we are asking is that our meddling Government stop helping us and leave us alone!
Alan Ferguson
Northeast Randolph Property Owners
