Category Archives: Criticism
New Study Published: “Do Enterprise Zones Create Jobs? Evidence From California’s Enterprise Zone Program”
The National Bureau of Economic Research has published a new paper by David Neumark, Professor of Economics at the University of California, Irvine, and Jed Kolko of the Public Policy Institute of California. The paper can be downloaded here (there is a $5.00 charge for the the 53 page PDF). I am currently reading it [...]
Major EZ Article in Los Angeles Daily News
Today’s Los Angeles Daily News features a front page article by Brandon Lowrey discussing the Enterprise Zone program. The article is one of the more in depth I have read and contains many interesting quotations from policymakers and experts. The subtitle to the article, “Although tax-credit areas cost $400 million, no one can prove they [...]
Loophole?
A pair of editorials question the notion that tax credits, such as the Enterprise Zones, can be termed tax “loopholes.” There is no question that the term loophole is loaded and has a negative connotation; it suggests a manipulation or even an evasion of tax rules. But is it appropriate to call an overt tax [...]
Sacramento Bee Endorses LAO Plan
Including the “reduction” of Enterprise Zones.
Legislative Analysts Office Budget Recommendation: Cancel Enterprise Zones
The LAO’s recent, and somewhat unprecedented, budget recommendations have gotten an extraordinary amount of press. A search on Google News for “Elizabeth Hill Budget” reveals well over 400 news items. Within the recommendation is a broad attack on the Enterprise Zone program (George Skelton’s Los Angeles Times column on the subject refers to Enterprise Zones [...]
Do Incentives Work?
An alert reader found this fascinating article in Governing Magazine: Tax incentives have long been endorsed as the highway to prosperity — attracting businesses, providing jobs and enriching the state. That’s been conventional wisdom in most states and cities. One problem: Most public finance experts consider them bad policy. Tax incentives that target specific companies [...]
Dan Walters Blasts Enterprise Zones
Sacramento Bee columnist Dan Walters blasts the Enterprise Zone program in a column about the irrelevancy of the Lieutenant Governor and the wastefulness of the Economic Development Commission. Sacbee.com requires a login to read the article, but it was also reprinted here in the Fresno Bee. Unfortunately, his criticism is based on surprisingly superficial analysis: [...]
Shock: Enterprise Zones Contain Profitable Businesses
The San Francisco Business Times dusts off some old, tried and true canards in this critical article about the new San Francisco Enterprise Zone. You need to have a paid subscription to read the whole thing. For starters: Aside from its wider reach, San Francisco’s redrawn enterprise zone is noteworthy for another reason: It includes [...]
Enterprise Zone Underutilized?
A recent article in the Imperial Valley Business Journal claims that the relatively new Enterprise Zone there is not being fully utilized. The article goes so far as to even express concern that the zone could be undesignated due to its lack of activity: Eligible Brawley businesses are failing to take advantage of tax breaks [...]
California Budget Project Criticizes HCD Study
The Sacramento Business Journal is reporting that the California Budget Project is responding to the Enterprise Zone study recently released by HCD and touted by the Governor: The California Budget Project questioned the effectiveness of the state’s Enterprise Zone program in a recent report. Responding to a Department of Housing and Community Development study the [...]
Some More Perspective
Whenever I hear about various aspects of California’s $131 billion budget I think back to the California Budget Project’s report bemoaning the almost $300 million “cost” of the Enterprise Zone. (I say “cost” with quotation marks because there is a fundamental distinction between money that the government takes from taxpayers and then spends versus money [...]
Chamber of Chickens?
California Chamber of Chicken Little Reports Sky is Falling in State What makes the Chambers crocodile tears over jobs even more cynical is their continued heavy support for tax breaks, including the Enterprise Zone tax credit, despite the studies continue to show they do not create jobs. The California Budget Project earlier this year issued [...]
CalChamber On Bradshaw
Here is the California Chamber of Commerce link to the Bradshaw report.
Fuzzy Math
It doesn’t take long to find distorting manipulations of numbers in the new California Budget Project report, “California’’s Enterprise Zones Miss the Mark.” The first point contained in the Executive Summary is: The cost of the Enterprise Zone Program has increased substantially. The state’’s annual revenue loss due to the program grew nineteen-fold between 1993 [...]
California Budget Project One Two Punch
This morning, following some friendly press regarding statements made in CBP’s “Who’s Paying Taxes?” report that I commented on yesterday, the CBP website is reporting the “breaking news” that “California’s Enterprise Zones miss the mark.” The news, of course, is contained in a new report released today authored by the CBP themselves. The report’s release [...]
