This is corporate welfare
Here is what a tax abatement is, once you strip away the paperwork.
A company asks the county for money it did not earn, and the county
says yes. That is welfare. It does not matter that the recipient has a
logo, or that no check ever changes hands. Every dollar the
company is excused from paying is a dollar the county spent on that
company. The roads, the ambulance and the fire department still cost
what they cost. The people who did not get a discount cover the
difference.
What full taxation is actually worth
Government should not pick winners and losers
When five people in a room decide that one company pays full taxes
and another does not, that is not a free market. That is a favor. It has
a name, crony capitalism, and it is the same thing whether it happens in
Washington or in Centerville. Think about it from where you sit. What
could your business, your ranch or your family do if the county decided
you were the one who did not have to pay? Nobody is offering you that
deal. They are offering it to a company with a lobbyist. If a project is
a good business, it will succeed on its own. If it is not, your money
should not be propping it up. Let the market decide.
Every reason they give, answered
Conservative leadership does not do this
Leon County is conservative country, and it elects conservatives to
run it. Lower taxes for everybody is a conservative idea. Lower taxes for
one company that asked, paid for by everybody who did not, is the
opposite. It is government deciding it knows better than the market
which businesses deserve to succeed. A conservative court should not
need to be talked out of corporate welfare. It should be the one saying
no. Ask them to govern the way they ran.
If it only works with a handout, it does not work
The State Comptroller is plain about what an abatement is for. It is a
tool “to attract new industries” by “easing the property
tax burden on certain projects.” In other words, a subsidy. A data
center, a power plant or any other large industrial project that only
pencils out because Leon County agrees to forgo its taxes is a project
the market has already said no to. The county is being asked to overrule
that answer with your money.
What the state says an abatement is for
Good companies come without being paid
Leon County already knows what a company that belongs here looks
like. Nucor’s steel mill in Jewett has been here for decades,
competes in a hard industry, pays its taxes without an abatement, and
puts tens of thousands of dollars a year into scholarships and events
for kids at every school in the county. Nobody paid it to come, and
nobody had to write any of that into an agreement. That is what the
market produces when government stays out of the way. A company worth
having does not need to be bribed.
It is a choice, not a requirement
Nobody is forcing the county to give this away. Texas law leaves new
construction out of the 3.5 percent voter-approval cap, so a
brand-new project can be taxed in full without breaching any limit and
without raising anyone else’s rate. Granting the abatement is a
decision five people make in a room, and they can decide otherwise.
Saying no costs you nothing.
How the cap actually works