Mountain State Spotlight – On Tuesday, West Virginia lawmakers were set to hear testimony about an area where the state could be leading the way on economic policy: Elimination of special tax break deals targeted to land specific new development projects. Read the full article.
George Mason University researcher Michael Farren was the key witness. He was going to tell the Legislature’s Commission on Interstate Cooperation that huge incentive packages don’t really work, and describe how West Virginia could help eliminate pointless competition among states trying to land new jobs.
“These subsidies remain a tenacious problem, even as support grows for phasing them out,” Farren planned to tell lawmakers, according to his prepared testimony. “Academic research consistently shows that economic development subsidies fail to achieve their stated goals.”
