Incentives and subsidies: Investigating economic development claims (Sponsored by Bloomberg)

• Event: 2012 IRE Conference
• Speakers: TBA
• Date/Time: Friday, June 15 at 8:30 a.m.
• Location: Salon C-D
• Audio file: Only members can listen to conference audio

State and local governments give billions of dollars each year to private companies in the hopes of creating jobs, but these deals often deliver fewer jobs than expected at a large cost to the public treasury. In this session, you’ll learn how companies play cities and states against one another to get bigger subsidies, how to analyze the costs of subsidy deals and the studies used to justify them, and the resources available to investigate projects.

Related Tipsheets

• Economic Development Subsidies: $70 Billion Worth of Stories
  LeRoy's Powerpoint is a great resource for all things related to economic development claims. He includes the harm that job subsidies can cause and lots of story ideas.

• Reporting on economic development subsidies
  Heaney's Powerpoint presentation provides you with great questions to ask and issues to consider when covering economic development claims.

• Finding the holes in economic impact studies--Powerpoint
  Connolly's Powerpoint presentation is full of great questions to ask yourself when investigating economic development claims and ideas on how to put your findings into perspective for the reader.

• Tipsheet for Reporting on Economic Development Subsidies & Recipient Companies
  LeRoy offers lots of helpful tips and websites for reporting on subsidy programs in your state.

• Finding the holes in economic impact studies
  Use this tipsheet when looking into studies that claim projects have an economic impact -- often used when someone wants to build a stadium, change a government regulation, promote tourism or bring a factory to town.