For nearly 10 years, Winston-Salem has been at Ground Zero of the battle over the wisdom and legality of giving incentives to businesses. First came the lawsuit by Bill Maready. That went all the way to the N.C. Supreme Court, which ruled that incentives were OK. A more recent lawsuit
is challenging the massive incentives package that the state, Winston-Salem and Forsyth County ponied up to get Dell to build its computer-assembly plant in southeast Forsyth County. A resolution on that is probably years away.
In the meantime,
together.
My suspicion is that there are several good reasons why the Triad is such an incentives hotbed. But basically it comes down to a) our economy has been battered more than the other major metro areas of Charlotte and the Triangle; and b) We still have enough municipal wealth to offer sizable incentives.
Look for incenties to be an issue in our local race for the 31st State Senate seat held by Ham Horton, who died last week. A polling person called me the other night from an outfit called
Your host is Ken Otterbourg, the managing editor at the Winston-Salem Journal. It's a forum to discuss the media, from
We helped make this bed and we’re gonna have to lie in it until someone changes the rules. I just hope our leaders are honest with us about the relative merits of any deal they do with a company.
Your paper is full of stories about our stretched budget and strained public services, so our leaders darn-well better be able to justify any corporate welfare they dole out. In other words they better guarantee lots of jobs because we sure aren’t likely to get tax-revenues directly from the companies.
My other problem is this: How do you think all the companies that have been providing jobs and paying taxes feel about these newcomers getting special treatment?
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