Why is it that government has to stick their nose into picking winners and losers by subsiding companies with our money when they have shown time and time again that they are unaccountable to the public for the money we give them? Their job is to provide an acceptable economic and tax environment equally for all companies in the state. Why should Employers Resource be subsidizing a company that is going to be their competition? That is just plain dumb. The fact that Mr. Cilley, owner of Araraxis, supports this makes me think that he does not know the meaning of socialism because what the state is doing with their tax incentives is certainly not capitalism. We have companies with long histories in our state like Employers Resource that have been supporting this state and the communities which they do business in for a long time. Why doesn’t the state offer Employers Resource a break of $6.5 million dollars to help them grow their business by giving them a tax reduction?
The real question is why Mr. Sayer would bring in a company like Paylocity to compete with Employers in the first place. I can only surmise from past history that Employers was not generous enough with their contributions to the Governor’s past election campaigns. Why do I say that? Well let’s look at the history of this administration. They brought in Corrections Corporation of America which contributed over $19,000 to the Otter coffers and cost the tax payers untold sums of money that was never investigated by anyone. They awarded the IEN contract illegally to Century Tel which donated $35,000 to Otter’s campaign cutting out Syringa for which they were sued and paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in attorney fees, not to mention the more than $40 million in taxpayer money that was lost from the Feds. Shall I go on?
What the taxpayers of Idaho don’t understand is that if you don’t pay you can’t play, at least not on an equal plane in this state with those that do pay for privilege. Wayne Hoffman is correct when he says that many of these companies may have moved here without incentives, but how then would the establishment lock in future campaign contributions from those companies without giving them taxpayer money as an incentive. Anytime you have to incentivize a company to move to your state you should sit down and figure out the real problem with your states policy. For Idaho it is the overall amount of taxes, fees, rules and regulations that are imposed on businesses, especially small business. This incentive is the biggest waste of money since the attempt by the state to institute the Luna Laws. Speaking of our old friend, Superintendent of Education Tom Luna there were several contracts handed out by his department after some very generous campaign contributions.
It’s time the taxpayers of this state stood up to this capital cronyism that continually transpires between the corporate world and the political world while the taxpayers are the only ones on the losing end. I ask every voter’s to stop this pandering for jobs and more corporate welfare from the taxpayers who are starving from regressive taxes like the grocery tax and gas tax. You need to remember the last legislative session when there was a tax reform bill proposed which would have eliminated the grocery tax and lowered the income tax. Instead your legislators saw fit to give everyone a 7 cent per. gallon gas tax hike with no cut in the grocery tax. But now you see where they are spending your money. It’s on corporate welfare making the rich richer by subsidizing them to guarantee support in the next election for those who gave them you’re money.
If you want to create good paying jobs, all we have to do is to take back control of our land from the federal government. Logging jobs pay 50 to 60 thousand dollars a year. Open cut miners above ground make on average $100,000 per year. Instead of wasting our taxpayer money on socialistic programs like this tax incentive program, let’s spend that money on recovery of our land. Our rural areas and our schools are suffering from continually lower PILT payments, and it is time we acknowledged the fact that we are a natural resource state and need access to our natural resources. Your chance to have your say will be in the 2016 primary and general election. Before you check that box for the incumbent make sure you check their voting record. We have far too many legislators ready and willing to impose more rules and regulations on you along with higher taxes only to advance their legislative careers as Professional Politicians.
