A public meeting on tax abatements Monday evening generated many more questions than answers.
About 50 people met in the City Council’s chambers to learn about local economic development practices and discuss ways to make sure taxpayer money used as business incentives is spent wisely.
The group included at least three elected officials, numerous local labor leaders and concerned citizens.
At issue: Do city and county officials do enough to make sure companies that receive tax abatements actually create the jobs they promise? And should temporary or minimum wage jobs receive as much abatement consideration as permanent, high-paying jobs?
Tom Lewandowski, who organized the meeting, is president of the Northeast Indiana Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO. His organization includes the Unemployed and Anxiously Employed Workers’ Initiative, which sponsored Monday’s event.
The initiative’s members include those who’ve lost jobs in plant closings.
“We think we can do better,” Lewandowski said of the current tax abatement process. “And based on the people we represent, we know we have to do better.”
Cheryl Hitzemann, a member of the workers’ initiative, has reviewed some local employers’ annual compliance filings, which are public record.
The goal is to find what’s working well so officials can do more of it, she said. But some of the self-reported information didn’t make sense and lacked consistency about the types of jobs created, she said.
Lewandowski is advocating for local officials to define various terms – such as “job” and “economic development.”
...
During Monday’s meeting, the audience offered a few suggestions, including:
•Researching best practices for tax abatement compliance
•Asking college business students to tackle the problem
•Hiring an independent auditor to verify annual compliance filings
•Stopping all abatement awards until the system is overhauled.
Lewandowski invited everyone to take home and study lists of companies that have received local tax abatements.
He suggested that if anyone has a sibling or friend working in one of those employers, that person could provide Lewandowski’s group with a behind-the-scenes report on what’s really going on there. It’s a no-cost way of checking on whether companies are keeping job creation promises.
“The reality is,” he said, “we’re not going to find funding for tax abatement police.”
See the full article here:
