How Activism at the Local Level Can Rein in Corporate Subsidies – Non Profit News

Arlene Martínez: I was a journalist for many years, before I got into this space (corporate and government accountability), and I was pretty outraged when I got here, and I saw [that] I can’t even find out the company name or the amount of the subsidy [it is getting]. Two of the most basic things that you would imagine that you’d be able to access as a member of the public who’s giving your money away to this company. In a lot of places, you can’t even get that basic information.

So there have been a lot of efforts made around transparency, and a lot of transparency gains. I think when Good Jobs First started, it started rating the states on their transparency practices. A couple dozen might have had some information online about incentives, and now it’s about 48 states—49 states, actually. Georgia is the outlier. They don’t put anything basically online about these subsidy deals. So transparency is a big one.

And of course, we work with a lot of communities that are trying to get these community benefits agreements. So, I think one thing that we’ve learned is that these local officials don’t realize how much power they have to put strings on these deals.

And I think part of that is that these companies come in, they’re well dressed, they’re well spoken, they’re powerful, they’re rich. They come in with a lot of sway in these communities who get excited to be next to an Amazon.

I sat in on a lot of city council meetings. They’re making $600 a month as a city council member. They want to do good for their community, and they think they’re doing good for their community by bringing Amazon in, not realizing that Amazon is destroying their small businesses, injuring their workers—Amazon’s workers are injured terribly. So [council members] are hurting their workforce, but I think they do it with good intentions.

With] community benefits agreements…one thing that we’ve learned is that these local officials don’t realize how much power they have.

So, [we advocate for] adding strings to these deals for these communities, these legally binding community benefits agreements, so that workers are full time. They’re not these contract workers. They’re full time. They have benefits. That they are paid well—living wages, prevailing wages—and that there’s affordable housing set aside.

There was a great effort in Kansas City recently. The billionaire owners wanted to get some money for their stadium, and the voters voted against that subsidy deal. And part of what happened during the breakdown was negotiating this community benefit agreement. All the major grassroots groups were there, and the teams refused to set aside any meaningful money for affordable housing, so the groups walked.

So, the CBA—the community benefits agreement—that was finally inked, was between the team and the city mayor. Community groups had already walked. So that’s not really a true CBA.

But we have seen areas where those are very effective in getting good jobs brought to a community. And most of the time, these incentives are unnecessary, but if they’re going to be used, add a lot of strings to them.

We also see a lot of power organizing at the local level, because a lot of these subsidies are given out locally, and they have a lot of power to rein in the size of these subsidies. Like in Philadelphia, they were giving away these massive residential property tax breaks: 100 percent for 10 years. These luxury developers didn’t have to pay taxes for 10 years.

And then the council member there really led that fight to reduce that tax break, so over years, it gradually decreases per year. Would it have been nice to get rid of it altogether? Yeah, but those were some pretty big gains and pretty substantial dollars going back to all the services, all the public services, that that money would otherwise go to.