Memo to the brave souls willing to join (or stay with!) the EDC Board: please consider playing some small ball before you start swinging for the fences.
There’s no way you could have stopped MetLife from moving 243 jobs out of Warwick short of repeating what your boss just called a “historically poor decision.” North Carolina – state motto: cost of living, you get what you pay for – is giving MetLife about $100 million to move there.
From the TriangleBizBlog:
If the company reaches its job creation and investment goals – which could top $125.5 million – it could receive as much as $87.2 million from the state’s Jobs Development Investment Grant program over the next 12 years. It could also receive another $2 million from the governor’s One North Carolina Fund.
Evidently, North Carolinians have been too busy basking in Dean Smith’s golden years to follow the post-pitching mistakes of Curt Schilling. They are giving MetLife some 25 percent more than we gave 38 Studios. North Carolina may be getting some eight times the jobs we did, but I’d argue MetLife might just be a bigger risk! It’s traditionally an insurance company that only very recently divested from the shady mortgage business it ventured into before the real estate bubble burst. The Charlotte Observer has a good history of MetLife’s recent financial foibles here.
“MetLife earned $1.4 billion in 2012, down 79 percent from the year before.”
Instead, EDC board members new and old, listen to RIPR’s Political Roundtable this morning … both Scott MacKay and Maureen Moakley make cogent cases for investing more in our creative economy. I found it interesting that MacKay mentioned a program in Boston that offers office space to young entrepreneurs as the Capital City considers remaking our most iconic office space into high end housing.
And while your listening, read this important editorial in today’s ProJo – it’s about the local food movement, a natural strength for a state our size. Instead of focusing exclusively on swinging for the fences with taxpayer giveaways to singular big companies, play some small ball and help make our state the kind of place where independent entrepreneurs want to live.