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Pulling back the curtains on wage-theft enforcement in MN; Trump's latest attack is on RFK, Jr; NM LGBTQ+ equality group endorses 2024 'Rock Star' candidates; Michigan's youth justice reforms: Expanded diversion, no fees.

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Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says rebuilding Baltimore's Key Bridge will be challenging and expensive. An Alabama Democrat flips a state legislature seat and former Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman dies at 82.

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Want New Business in PA? Group Says Grow Your Own

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Monday, March 22, 2010   

HARRISBURG, Pa. - For a long time, states have lured companies with incentive checks in an attempt to broaden the tax base and bring in new jobs. However, a new report from the Pennsylvania-based Keystone Research Center says that practice has run its course. It recommends instead that the state's approach to new business development should be "Grow Your Own."

Keystone Research Center executive director Steve Herzenberg says it makes sense to take the incentive check earmarked for that one big, out-of-state corporation and spend it on numerous smaller businesses already in Pennsylvania.

"These programs help get good ideas from researchers - some of them in universities - into small businesses that convert them into commercial products. That's how they grow small, innovative companies."

Herzenberg also recommends considering how well a new company looking to do business in Pennsylvania would fit into the existing economic landscape.

"Whether that's in renewable energy or in powdered metals in the north-central part of the state, you don't want to hand out subsidies in an ad hoc way that's insensitive to the strengths of your regional economies."

Research has been done showing that the home field really is an advantage when it comes to economic development, Herzenberg points out.

"One recent study basically found that the growth of home-grown technology companies in Pennsylvania over a 16-year period was 28 times larger than the flow of companies across state lines because of recruitment."

When subsidies are handed out, he recommends that there be public disclosure. If a company doesn't produce what it says it will, Herzenberg says, the state should take the subsidy back. He also urges that economic development agencies be given a new set of tools, one that focuses more on creating jobs for a 21st-century economy and less on "doing the deal" with outside firms.

The full report is available at www.keystoneresearch.org.




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