UPDATE: Goodyear giveaway vetoed by Easley

Easley lets air out of Goodyear Tires

The irony is breathtaking. With a Saturday deadline looming for Governor Easley to veto any 2007 legislation, the two big issues on the table are tires and roads.

The "tires" issue involves the General Assembly wanting to give $40 million in your tax dollars to another private company. In this case, the money would be used to upgrade Goodyear's Fayetteville facility, and is to be delivered only if Goodyear sustains its current employment levels and invests $200 million in the factory itself. Easley apparently doesn't like the legislation and is considering a veto. Representative Rick Glazier (D-Cumberland County), who sponsored the bill, says he wants to reconvene the legislature to over-ride the veto should it occur.

The "roads" issue is more complicated. The General Assembly left town, according to some, without planning properly for the state's growing infrastructure needs. That means that Fred "The Asphalt King" Smith doesn't have all the assurances he would like that the state will continue to hire his company to pave paradise. For my part, I don't think the legislature has its head on straight about infrastructure, and I hope they don't come back and do anything stupid just to say they're taking action.

.......................

Arguments can be made on all sides of the corporate incentives issue. The good old US of A has become a hotbed of competition for manufacturing facilities, with different states and locales bidding hard against one another to lure (or keep) business in their borders. Indeed, there are some communities that would just about kill to land a factory with some decent jobs.

Fayetteville, North Carolina, should not be one of them. If Goodyear can't make a case for staying in Cumberland County and investing properly in its own success, the taxpayers of North Carolina should not be tipping the balance with their hard-earned dollars.

Plenty of my friends disagree with me. They consider this a smart investment in the future, and I can see their point, to a point. But there's a big problem: these "smart investments" are fundamentally unsustainable. The minute we give away the store to one company, another dozen line up behind them. Plenty of long-standing North Carolina companies are looking enviously at all the businesses slopping at the public trough and wondering whether they're being given the shaft.

It looks to me like Goodyear (and other corporate blackmailers) are playing both ends against the middle. They're negotiating with committees in the the legislature, where everyone needs to look good in order to get re-elected. Only the dispassionate eye of an out-going governor can see through the haze: we cannot continue to bribe corporations to keep their operations in our state. It's a loser's game that has to stop somewhere.

And it should stop with Goodyear.

Mike Easley should veto the Goodyear giveaway, and he should do it now. If the legislature wants to reconvene to override him, so be it. We'll fight that battle when the time comes.

NC Policy Watch captures the whole story in this great editorial cartoon (click to enlarge):