Dan Kane finds that Gov. Bev Perdue and her state Commerce Department have a selective template for their news releases promoting new jobs for North Carolina:
Gov. Bev Perdue and the N.C. Commerce Department have a curious practice when it comes to announcing economic incentives linked to job creation.
When a company brings jobs that match or exceed a county’s annual average wage, their press releases mention it. When the wages are less, as in the case of today’s announcement, there typically is no such mention.
Today they announced that Advanced Textile Solutions will open a plant in Caldwell County and create 127 jobs as part of a $500,000 investment over the next three years. For that, the company will get $127,000 from the One North Carolina Fund.
Those jobs will pay an average annual wage of $19,111, the first time the state has offered the One NC money for jobs paying on average less than $20,000 a year. Caldwell County’s annual average wage in 2008, the most recent year available from the Employment Security Commission, was $29,756.13.
Of course, neither Perdue nor the Commerce Department notes that the only way the government can contribute money toward creating a job is by taking the money out of the private sector in the first place. It’s like scooping water out of the deep end of a pool, dumping it into the shallow end, and expecting the overall water level to rise.
Joe Coletti pans incentives in the video clip below.
