The John Locke Foundation has a mini-report out on county-by-county corporate welfare. Of course I would like to see more depth. I don’t like, for example, how AvL got credit for creating a number of gross instead of net jobs. Maybe there was a typo or some other misunderstanding, but I can’t know. When private companies accept public money, they don’t owe it to the taxpayers as a form of investors to make public their financials.
Back to the report, Buncombe County came in second place. In five years, counties entered into 776 contracts valued at $284 million. Buncombe County promised over 10 percent of the total, or only about $25 a year from each man, woman, and child within its boundaries. The good news is those dollars spent have ROI’s around 100, so you’re annual income, through induction and indirection, is $2500 higher.
