Category Archives: Criticism
Los Angeles Times: “Some affluent areas qualify for tax breaks intended to benefit the poor”
Reporter Jack Dolan wrote a story for Sunday’s Los Angeles Times highlighting perceived problems with the use of Targeted Employment Areas in the Enterprise Zone program. Dolan is the same reporter who broke the story on the use of State issued ATM cards for welfare recipients at casinos.
While the article on Enterprise Zones raises [...]
CAEZ Editorial
CAEZ President and Long Beach Enterprise Zone manager Craig Johnson had the following editorial printed in the Long Beach Press-Telegram:
Lately many business writers have taken to beating up on the state of California. Chief Executive Officer magazine recently ranked California as the worst state to do business in. Traveling around the state to business meetings, [...]
Dan Walters Bashes EZs Again
Dan Walters has published yet another commentary critical of the Enterprise Zone program. Walters wrote very similar columns on Nov. 9, 2009 and Jan. 12, 2010.
CAEZ president Craig Johnson and I met with Walters in his office at the Bee a few months ago to discuss his columns and provide an alternate perspective. [...]
L.A. Times Blasts Enterprise Zones
Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik blasts the Enterprise Zone Program as “corporate welfare” in his column published June 18.
On the Other Hand
Some people think that the Enterprise Zone program doesn’t do a good enough job of demonstrating that employers made a definite, proactive decision to hire an employee that will provide them with a tax credit. The federal WOTC program attempts to do that more, but there is a flip side to the issue, as [...]
Dan Walters: Same Old Stuff
The headline given to Dan Walter’s column in yesterday’s Sacramento Bee was “Schwarzenegger’s job programs same old stuff.” In the piece Walters suggests:
Even when there are evaluations that question the efficacy of “job creation” subsidies, those who benefit from them resist any effort to erase them.
A case in point are the several dozen “enterprise [...]
Business Backs Enterprise Zones
Dan Dufresne, director of government relations for Epsilon Systems Solutions Inc., published the following Op-Ed in the San Diego Union-Tribune yesterday:
The state’s nonpartisan Legislative Analysts’ Office (LAO) just released some staggering figures: our state must address a deficit of $20.7 billion between now and the time the Legislature enacts a 2010?11 budget. What is perhaps [...]
More Response to Dan Walters
Deidre F. Kelsey, chairwoman of the Merced County Board of Supervisors, published a response to Dan Walters’ column in today’s Merced Sun-Star:
Contrary to Dan Walters’ column (“It’s time for a hard look at California tax dodges,” Nov. 9) enterprise zones create jobs.
Proof is in the numbers: Since the designation of the Merced County Enterprise Zone [...]
CAEZ Responds
The Sacramento Bee has printed a rebuttal to Dan Walters’ last column by CAEZ President, Craig Johnson:
Dan Walters’ Nov. 9 column, “It’s high time for hard look at tax dodges,” questions the effectiveness of “enterprise zones,” yet evidence to the contrary points to the continued success of the program. Business owners large and small face [...]
Dr. Swenson Responds
On Monday the Sacramento Bee’s Dan Walters published another attack on the Enterprise Zone program touting the PPIC’s critical study and dismissing a University of Southern California study charging that it had been “quickly re-released,” and that Dr. Charles Swenson’s “affiliation with a company, National Tax Credit Group, that advises firms on how to obtain [...]
Dan Walters: “It’s time for a hard look at California tax dodges”
The Sacramento Bee’s Dan Walters has a new attack on the Enterprise Zone program today:
Last June, the Public Policy Institute of California released a highly critical report on California’s “enterprise zone” program that provides big tax breaks to businesses for supposedly hiring workers in areas of high unemployment.
PPIC’s study of the 42 zones, which [...]
Salinas Valley Feels Strongly About Their Zone
Andrew Myrick, manager of the new Salinas Valley Enterprise Zone, has an Op-Ed in the Californian:
…In the midst of this recession, other states are expanding their enterprise zone programs and are implementing incentives that are focused on attracting businesses from California. It is absolutely imperative that California have a meaningful and useful economic development program [...]
Senator Dutton on Enterprise Zones
From the Senator’s own blog:
It’s no secret that California is facing an economic crisis not seen since the Great Depression. Unemployment in the Inland Empire has now reached 13 percent, and the state is facing a $26 billion deficit.
While the entire nation is suffering during this economic downturn, I believe there is a direct correlation [...]
Oxnard: “California’s economic future rests on our ability to retain business and promote entrepreneurship.”
HCD has ranked all 15 applications for the new Enterprise Zones and the results have been with the Governor’s office since sometime last month. Presumably, they are waiting for the right moment to announce the four new zones.
One of those applicants was the City of Oxnard in Ventura County. Bruce Stenslie, president and CEO [...]
More PPIC Debate
The Sacramento Bee’s Dan Walters cites both the PPIC and USC studies and concludes that since serious people can reach different conclusions we should just forget the whole thing.
Meanwhile, in the Modesto Bee, Bill Bassitt, CEO of the Stanislaus Economic Development and Workforce Alliance, writes that the Enterprise Zone is a success in Stanislaus County. [...]
