Former N.C. Supreme Court Justice Bob Orr, Executive Director of the North Carolina Institute for Constitutional Law, delivered remarks on courage and leadership during the featured presentation to the E.A. Morris Fellowship for Emerging Leaders Feb. 5, 2010, in Durham. The presentation also includes recognition of the 2009 class of E.A. Morris fellows.
Voters should decide whether to write a $205 million check for a new public safety center and have their taxes raised for it, a handful of local conservative leaders said at a news conference Wednesday.The call for a citywide referendum, and pointed criticism of the Clarence E. Lightner Public Safety Center, a proposed 17-story glass tower, come less than a week before the RaleighCity Council is scheduled to vote on the downtown project at its Tuesday meeting after two previous delays. "They're supposed to go to the public for a vote," said Bob Orr, a Republican and former N.C. Supreme Court Justice who heads the N.C. Institute for Constitutional Law. Orr said he thinks that Mayor Charles Meeker and the seven other members of the council don't have the power to push significant debt on Raleigh taxpayers without getting approval directly from voters.
"Nationally, all we are doing is moving companies around and giving them huge incentives to do what they were probably going to do anyway," said Robert Orr, executive director of the North Carolina Institute for Constitutional Law and a former North Carolina Supreme Court justice.
On January 13th, Good Jobs First held a press conference to announce the release of its major study of seven states competing to grow their economies amid the tax-break and giveaway incentives war among the states. The study looks at Pennsylvania’s policies and compares them to those of Ohio, New Jersey, New York, Maryland, North Carolina and West Virginia. It charts a positive alternative strategy for the most effective job-creation investments. The study indicates that “[i]nstead of competing with each other for specific companies, states' resources will best be spent strengthening small, young and locally owned businesses, and improving the skills of workers to match industry needs.” The study provides eight case studies of big-ticket incentive deals, including those involving Dell and Google here in North Carolina.
The Center for Economic Development Reform (CEDR) is a recently established division of NCICL that is dedicated solely to delving into the morass or North Carolina's economic development laws, policies, and expenditures. The goal is to keep the public abreast through Corporate Welfare Weekly newsletters that provide snapshots of the state's actions and spending for corporate incentives, tax breaks, and giveaways.
"While we don't blame Mr. Moore and his production team for taking what is offered, it's striking that a movie focused on the inequities of granting taxpayer dollars to private enterprise would apply for and receive taxpayer-funded incentives." ~ Michael LaFaive, fiscal policy director at the Mackinac Center.
The Triangle Business Journal reported in a January 22 article that the time has come for two tire plants to receive millions in promised incentives. “A state committee is gathering data to determine whether two large eastern North Carolina tire manufacturing plants each will receive their first $2.5 million in cash payments under a program aimed at retaining jobs. The General Assembly created the program back in 2008, agreeing to give Goodyear Tire inFayetteville and Bridgestone Americas in Wilson $30 million each over the next 10 years if they continue to employ at least 2,000 full-time workers at the operations and meet other requirements. …The decision on whether the first incentive installments will be paid to Goodyear and Bridgestone is in the hands of the North Carolina Department of Commerce’s five-member Economic Investment Committee, or EIC, which also approves Job Development Investment Grants, or JDIG’s, in the state. Unlike JDIGS’s, which provide cash to companies for creating jobs, the so-called Job Maintenance and Capital Development program, or JMAC, covering the two tire companies, pays cash to keep jobs already in place. Aimed at keeping Goodyear and Bridgestone from moving their operations elsewhere, the incentives marked a new approach for North Carolina.”
The Corporate Welfare Weekly is launching an effort to identify ANY company doing businesses in North Carolina who plans to expand, relocate within the state, or simply create new jobs – but ISN’T getting any incentive from the state or local government. Email Shelley Gonzales at gonzales@ncicl.org.
Jason Kay, Senior Staff Attorney for the North Carolina will be speaking at the Annexation Law & Reform Conference 2010 on Saturday, March 6th, 2010 at 9am.
For more information, click here.
Justice Robert Orr, Executive Director of the North Carolina Institute for Constitutional Law, appeared on NC SPIN this past Sunday, February 7th, 2010. The show covered topics including working on the railroad, honest services, medicaid cost overruns, and ethics reforms.
To watch the program online, visit NC SPIN Online.
