“But everybody does it” — Cities and states addicted to soliciting for corporate favors

Wrong priorities?

According to Rolnick, whether officials truly believe that offering incentives is good policy or they feel that their hands are tied, the end result is the same: “Private companies have been able to extract more and more public dollars,” he said.

“Think what states could do with $70 billion right now,” Thomas said. “That would be enough to hire back every employee that has been laid off during the recession. That isn’t a zero-sum game. Those are real jobs that people don’t have anymore.”

“There are a lot of places now that don’t have any economic development strategy at all except to look for some companies to throw money at,” Rolnick addded. “That’s really a shame, because we know what does create net jobs, what they should be doing instead. Educating your kids creates jobs. Maintaining your roads and bridges and public universities creates jobs. And those are exactly the things that our elected officials are getting sidetracked from doing.”

Peter Fisher of the Iowa Policy Project agreed. “This is truly a case of private gain at public loss,” he said. “At a time when state budgets have huge holes in them, our infrastructure is deteriorated, we’re laying off some public workers and cutting the pensions of others,” the problem of states and localities wasting money on corporate subsidies “has hardly been a part of the conversation at all.”