I'm reading through New Jersey's massive new corporate tax incentive bill -- which lawmakers intend to pass by Monday -- and will be tweeting some observations. 1/?

First, it's for $11.5 billion over six years, which is a truly absurd amount of money. There's literally no reason whatsoever that NJ needs to spend that much on this.

And the process clearly stinks: An $11.5 billion bill will go from release to passage in 5 days, two of which are a weekend. Not cool.

At least one of the programs is built on top of federal Opportunity Zones. Opportunity Zones are bad and people who promote them should feel bad. https://boondoggle.substack.com/p/a-boondoggle-biden-can-fix

There's a raging market in transferable NJ tax credits, which means programs subsidize corporations for which they were never intended. The bill seems to do squat to deal with that issue. (Though maybe I just haven't gotten to that section yet?) https://boondoggle.substack.com/p/for-sale-new-jersey-tax-breaks

Some of the labor protections are good, and are aimed specifically at projects that involve retail and warehousing. Smart moves.

The Food Desert Relief Program the bill creates is well-intentioned, but the history of using tax incentives in food deserts is bad. People aren't avoiding nutritious food because they aren't interested or can't find it, they just can't afford it. https://talkpoverty.org/2019/06/28/new-jersey-tax-break-food-desert/

"If at any time during the eligibility period the authority determines that the developer made a material misrepresentation on the developer’s application, the developer shall forfeit the incentive award."

Good, and duh.

The bill requires Community Benefits Agreements, with required public hearings and community advisory committees before incentives are given. Good! And tax credits get rescinded if the agreements are broken. Also good!

The Emerge Program seems to be betting quite a lot on precise economic benefits analyses that are never going to be that precise.

There are so many programs in this bill. There is no reason to cram all this stuff into one massive piece of legislation other than to shove a bunch of bad stuff through with the good things.

As is so often the case with these things, the programs that will disproportionately benefit big corporations are tax credit heavy -- i.e., free money -- while the small business programs are loan heavy.

"There is established in the New Jersey Economic Development Authority a Working Group on Entrepreneur Zones"

This idea seems .... fine? ... but why does everything in economic development have to be a zone? Come up with a more original name, people.

The New Jersey Ignite Program will launder startup incentives through WeWork (and others like it), so that's a thing that will exist in the world.

Ah, and now we get to the "cap" of $11.5 billion over six years. Again, that's an absurd amount of money. To call that a cap is an insult to caps.

Ugh, I've arrived at the film tax credits section. Just no. https://boondoggle.substack.com/p/netflix-and-swindle

New Mexico is trying the exact same thing with "film partners" that will supposedly bring long-term benefits. It's just going to blow a massive hole in the budget. https://boondoggle.substack.com/p/netflix-and-swindle

I guess it's going to be the newly created Inspector General's job to suss out which threats by New Jersey companies to move are real versus fiction designed to extort tax breaks, because the section on making that verification is not encouraging!

So my overall takeaway: There are some good reforms in here, but they are more than outweighed by the absurd dollar amount, the banking on dubious economic impact analyses, and the lack of serious, long-term support for small businesses. Vote this thing down. END.