AP: For ‘bathroom law,’ N.C. to take $3.7 billion hit

RALEIGH, N.C. — Despite Republican assurances that North Carolina’s “bathroom law” isn’t hurting the economy, the law limiting protections of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people will cost the state more than $3.76 billion in lost business over a dozen years, according to an Associated Press analysis.

Over the past year, North Carolina has suffered financial hits ranging from scuttled plans for a PayPal facility, which would have added an estimated $2.66 billion to the state’s economy, to a canceled Ringo Starr concert that deprived a town’s amphitheater of about $33,000 in revenue. The blows have landed in the state’s biggest cities as well as towns surrounding its flagship university, and from the mountains to the coast.

North Carolina could lose hundreds of millions more because the NCAA is avoiding the state, usually a favored host. The group is set to announce sites for various championships through 2022, and North Carolina won’t be among them as long as the law is on the books. The NAACP also has initiated a national economic boycott.

The AP analysis — compiled through interviews and public records requests — represents the largest reckoning yet of how much the law, passed a year ago, could cost the state. The law excludes gender identity and sexual orientation from statewide antidiscrimination protections, and requires transgender people in many public buildings to use restrooms corresponding to the sex on their birth certificates.

Still, AP’s tally is likely an underestimation of the law’s true costs. The count includes only data obtained from businesses and state or local officials regarding projects that canceled or relocated because of House Bill 2. A business project was counted only if AP determined through public records or interviews that HB2 was why it was withdrawn.

Some projects that left, such as a Lionsgate television production that backed out of plans in Charlotte, weren’t included because of a lack of data on their economic impact.

The AP also tallied the losses of dozens of conventions, sporting events and concerts through figures from local officials. The AP didn’t attempt to quantify anecdotal reports that lacked hard numbers, or to forecast the loss of future conventions.

Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan — who leads the largest company based in North Carolina — said he’s spoken privately to business leaders who went elsewhere with projects or events because of the controversy, and he said he fears more decisions like that are being made quietly.

“Companies are moving to other places because they don’t face an issue that they face here,” he told a World Affairs Council of Charlotte luncheon last month. “What’s going on that you don’t know about? What convention decided to take you off the list? What location for a distribution facility took you off the list? What corporate headquarters consideration for a foreign company — there’s a lot of them out there — just took you off the list because they just didn’t want to be bothered with the controversy? That’s what eats you up.”

Other measures show the country’s ninth-most-populous state has a healthy economy. By quarterly gross domestic product, the federal government said, North Carolina had the nation’s 10th-fastest-growing economy six months after the law passed. The vast majority of large companies with existing operations in the state — such as American Airlines, with its second-largest hub in Charlotte — made no public moves to financially penalize North Carolina.

Shortly after he signed the legislation, then-Gov. Pat McCrory, a Republican, issued a statement assuring residents it wouldn’t affect North Carolina’s status as “one of the top states to do business in the country.”

HB2 supporters say its costs have been tiny compared with an economy estimated at more than $500 billion a year, roughly the size of Sweden’s. They say they’re willing to absorb those costs if the law prevents sexual predators posing as transgender people from entering private spaces to molest women and girls — acts the law’s detractors say are imagined.

Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Forest issued a statement Monday accusing the AP of “another attempt to mislead and confuse the public through a bogus headline.” Forest questioned the tally and said that even if it were true, it would represent only a sliver of the state’s economy.

Forest declined an interview request to discuss AP’s analysis before its publication.

Meanwhile, the state’s governor — Democrat Roy Cooper, who has long opposed HB2 — responded to AP’s story by saying: “We now know that, based on conservative estimates, North Carolina’s economy stands to lose nearly $4 billion because of House Bill 2. That means fewer jobs and less money in the pockets of middle class families. We need to fix this now.”

And AP’s analysis shows the economy could be growing faster if not for projects that have been canceled.

The state will have missed out on more than $3.76 billion by the end of 2028. The losses are based on projects that already went elsewhere — so the money won’t be recouped even if the law is struck down in court or repealed.

By the end of 2017, the lost business will total more than $525 million.

“The biggest impact is how many times our phones are not ringing now,” said Shelly Green, CEO of the Durham Convention & Visitors Bureau. “When you think about it, this whole thing is just such a dumpster fire, and nobody wants to go near it.”