Alamosa City Council Debates Unfair Business Incentives

The Alamosa city council is, again, debating giving new businesses tax breaks and other incentives.

[Donna Wehe] also encouraged the city council to take the political heat off itself by working with area economic development groups to deal with potential new businesses so decisions would not fall so much on the council’s shoulders as on the larger group.

Right. Let's foist the question off on unelected bodies so that the politicians don't have to take the heat. It would be a shame if they ticked off their donors by giving their competitors a tax break.

[Councilwoman Marcia] Tuggle added that the city has to consider existing businesses and whether giving incentives to a new business might give it an unfair advantage.

“It definitely gives them an advantage,” Wehe responded. “The unfair part is subjective.”

The government is giving a business an advantage over another. By definition, that's not fair. There's nothing fair about it. It reminds me of this comic from the strip "Calvin and Hobbes".

It's not that the new business thinks that the tax break is fair. They know that it's unfair in their favor.

City Manager Nathan Cherpeski said one of his roles in his position in California before moving to Alamosa was to enforce such contracts. A company that defaulted on its contract would have to reimburse the city for incentives, he explained.

“If you have incentives, you have to have some sort of contract in place,” Cherpeski said. “We have never gotten to that point here.”

This much is right. If the city requires certain benchmarks from the business, the incentives become more of a loan and less of a gift. If a city is going to give incentives to new businesses, there has to be some proof that the businesses are fulfilling their part of the bargain.