Stimulus Bait & Switch

It has been a slight talking point here in northeast Ohio, but down south there is plenty of hot conversation and downright hostility over reports Columbus, Georgia may get federal stimulus money to build new headquarters and manufacturing facilities for Dayton sell-out NCR.

Unless you were out of town last week, it was pretty hard to miss the news that the former National Cash Register Company -- with roots deep in Dayton -- would be pulling up stakes and moving to Georgia. Thanks for the state incentives, but no thanks. Big jobs gone. Think adios Goodyear. Remember au revoir Firestone. Left behind: retirees and history but no more high-paying executive jobs.

Then came whispers of federal stimulus money, in part our tax dollars, being used by those crafty Southerners to lure our jobs to the sunbelt. That set local officials off, including U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown. He may love the whole idea of Uncle Sam bankrolling stimulus packages across the nation, but this one has political nightmare written all over it; imagine running for re-election as the party that bankrolled the NCR to Georgia? Might work if you're looking for votes in Columbus, GA but it won't play well in Columbus, OH much less Dayton.

Now the Dayton Daily News reports it really isn't the case; it's only that officials of the southern Columbus only applied to use stimulus money to help pave the way (literally) for a new headquarters building and new manufacturing center to house 850 employees. Whew, glad that worked itself out: they don't have the money, they're just applying for it.

We should feel so much better now.

Compare the NCR story in Dayton with what's happening in Phoenix, where there's a rebellion over using government money to provide retail real estate developers with what amounts to no-money-down safety nets. Arizona's constitution forbids such publicly-funded gifts, but as is the case across the nation (including here in Ohio) the use of public funds for such private purposes has become a very blurry proposition. Some of the western sunbelt state's thinkers are now musing things have gone too far, putting local governments on the hook for what should be the risky business of real estate magnates. It's in the courts, anti-"gift" politicians have replaced the go-go pro-developer officials and all in all there's quite a bit of discussion on just how much public should be part of the private partnership.

Rule of thumb: take the total amount of money going into the project, then divide by the number of jobs to be created/retained/promised. That's one simple metric that might make this whole debate a bit more understandable for the general public.

That is, if having the public understand matters.