EDATEs--Good for our Economy, Part I

Fake News Media locally is now attacking EDATES.  They are so ravenous in their new attack they have overlooked the fact that several of us on the dias didn't even vote for these--we inherited them.  Fake News.

Reading some of the garbage in the news lately can bring on a migraine style Excedrin Headache fast.  I mean really fast.

Because a lot of it is garbage, pure rubbish. 

Much of it is opinion blended with half truth, spiced with innuendo, and topped off with ad hominem attacks.  Pertinent facts are left out, lies are inserted, other issues are hyper-exaggerated, and the overall goal becomes to enrage the reader--not inform the reader.

At it's core, it is nothing more than opinions paraded as news designed to stir up animosity toward "some" elected officials. 

Local print media has changed and evolved, and it is now all about "hits" and "clicks" and "shares" and other statistics that lead and compel writers to stir division, stoke anger, push boundaries and run up the click counts--hoping for the next big "viral" story.  This is also how the writers are compensated in many instances--it becomes a glorified "popularity contest."

Good news stories by and large do not stir big numbers, and this leaves attack pieces and contrived controversies to carry the slack.

A recently departed PNJ reporter, who actually wrote really well and put out good stories, is no longer there because the pieces written by this individual, according to someone with whom I spoke who is very familiar, just did not stir up enough clicks. 

So now the focus is not on who, what, when, and where--it is  "Let's Get Salacious and Controversial!!!---Let's Get CLICKS!!" 

Take for instance this tripe about EDATES for area employers.  Somehow, this is now twisted into some kind of a bad thing for our area and economy.  This is an opinion piece, but it infuses some information purported to be factual, and devolves into one messy, sloppy attack piece. 

The target?  County Commissioners like me who support economic development and EDATES.

(EDATE stands for  economic development ad valorem tax exemption.  You can read all about them here.  What they are, how they came to be, what they are for, and how they are approved.) 

We have a number of companies that currently receive these incentives, and over the past four years we have exempted an average of $1.6 Million annually from these employers.

And for this, we generate jobs in manufacturing, we incentivize expansion of existing footprints, we get agreements for new equipment to be purchased and put on line locally, and we diversify our jobs base.  These are good, tangible results for the revenue we forego.

In one instance and for one company--we have exempted millions of dollars with EDATES.  We have also paid incentives from a different pot for additional jobs to be added.  With this one company--that total may well approach $50 Million Dollars in incentives.  And for that, we have a company that has invested $1.2 Billion in facility construction locally and employs 8,000 Escambian's currently with an annual payroll of $400 Million Dollars!  So yes, this incentivization pays back for years and decades to come--it pays back in spades.  No mention of this in the Sunday attack piece, though.

International Paper is now targeted because they have received EDATES for equipment purchases.  I am told by a source very familiar that the large investment made by IP may have gone to a different location were it not for a generous EDATE provided by our county a number of years back (before I was elected to this board).  Had that investment gone elsewhere--there is no guarantee the new IP jobs (or the existing jobs) would have stayed in Pensacola.  So now we have IP with 500 employees, 100 Contractor Employees, and a $250 Million Dollar yearly economic impact in our area --and the cartoonist is mad about the less than a Million dollars yearly over the last 20 years that we have exempted for IP.  Do the math for yourself, do not simply buy what the cartoonist wants to feed you in his ill-conceived, slanted, half-truth hatchet pieces.  He is a biased partisan hack, nothing more.

The intelligent strategy, looking at what IP has invested and what they are working to accomplish here in Escambia County-- is to keep their jobs here and work with IP to help them come into compliance with the environmental regulations that are required.   It is simple, it is a no-brainer.  It's what we are doing and IP is following the process to do this and they are in compliance with the law.

More about our EDATES in part II....