Becki gave you the first report on the state’s economic development spending, and you might have read more this morning.

But unless you monitored the meeting at which the spending report was unveiled, you missed the best moment.

Jason Jolley of the UNC Center for Competitive Economies (the outfit that offers to conduct for the state an 18-month, $350,000 study) explained one of the problems of using targeted tax incentives to increase North Carolina’s competitiveness:

I think the catch here is: the more competitive we are, the less we’ll actually need to use incentives. That doesn’t mean that they’ll go away because there’s always going to be pressure to use them. But I think the more competitive that we are, the less that we’ll have to use incentives.

Jolley also delivered a warning about using targeted tax incentives to maintain jobs, the strategy used this year to maintain Goodyear and Bridgestone Firestone plants in North Carolina:

It’s challenging to assess whether or not a company might really need those incentives to stay. You’re playing poker a bit, I think, in some cases.

Mr. Jolley will have to learn to downplay the importance of incentives until after taxpayers have given him $350,000 for his study.