The transparency legislation for publicly funded economic development in Indiana made it through both houses of the General Assembly. But it is only a start of what must be an ongoing and determined effort to shed light on the money and efforts spent to draw specific employers to a community in the name of economic development.
Taxpayers in Marion, and perhaps all of Grant County, have been wounded more than helped by our freewheeling economic development efforts on the local level. Mayors, city council members, county commissioners — even township trustees — get elected on promises to find people jobs. Sometimes, it’s government jobs for in-laws and sometimes it is a promise to pull down pieces of pie from the sky to hand out to everyone — like the Veriana project or the aptly named Earthbound — which local taxpayers yet to be born might still have a hand in paying off.
On the subject of pie, the Café Valley bakery project is moving ahead as the community has again placed its faith in people who have not delivered on less complicated deals before. We have endorsed the deal because it is a needed project that not only brings 100 jobs but also rehabilitates the former Thomson plant. Another plus is that, unlike past deals, Café Valley is a company already with a strong foothold in Phoenix looking to expand, rather than startup.
But it was disheartening to discover this week that Larry Polhill, the company point-man for the bakery and Café Valley stakeholder, has been connected to a company in bankruptcy that is also helping to build the local bakery.
It shows why the legislation passed in Indianapolis is inadequate to the task of rooting out the details that sometimes the due diligence of public officials spending someone else’s money — yours — simply fails to produce, but remains important in determining if a deal is good or bad for a community.
Still, Senate Bill 162, authored by Sen. Mike Delph, R-Carmel, and co-authored by Sen. Jim Banks, R-Columbia City, is better than nothing. The legislation requires that Indiana Economic Development Corp. to make available incentive agreements for companies after deals are made and to include annual updates on actual jobs created as reviewed by an independent auditor.
The independent auditor part is important because both the company and the government have a stake in making the public think a deal was more fruitful than it really was to the community as a whole.
Perhaps the county or the city would consider a local version of this water-down legislation with regard to the Grant County Economic Development Council.
We appreciate the audits the Growth Council has now provided the Chronicle-Tribune, audits we intend to publish soon. But we think a regular process of accountability should be put in place for the Growth Council in return for the hundreds of thousands in local tax dollars it garners every year with no oversight.
We will keep trying to tell readers what these people are doing with the community’s money, and we have hopes more will be done in the future.