Business tax incentives: Spread the wealth around
From The Kansas City Star
Applebee’s made the right call to terminate three employees who allegedly racially profiled and falsely accused two black women of leaving the Independence Center restaurant without paying their bill.
But shame on the Independence police officer who appeared to mock one of the patrons for being upset.
Alexis Brison and her friend Asia Hardy were eating at Applebee’s in the mall Friday when they were approached by an Independence police officer, mall security guard and a restaurant manager.
The women were accused of running out on a tab from the night before. They vehemently denied the allegations and suggested Applebee’s was guilty of racial profiling.
Brison, who is from St. Louis, filmed part of the interaction, which surfaced online over the weekend and quickly went viral. The video, along with a description of the incident, was uploaded to Brison’s Facebook page.
The suggestion that Brison and Hardy had previously dined and dashed understandably elicits an emotional response from them, and one of the women cries and pleads with the officer to believe her.
“This is not right. We have not been here,” she tells him in the video.
The woman’s shrieking cries and the officer’s condescending reaction — he laughs at and ridicules her — are tough to watch.
“Does she normally act like this?” the officer says as the distraught woman professes her innocence.
Applebee’s deserves credit for admitting to racial profiling. The company temporarily closed the Independence Center location “in order for the team there to regroup, reflect, learn and grow from this.”
“We very much regret this occurred and sincerely apologize to our guests and community,” an Applebee’s spokesman told The Star.
Bill Georgas, Applebee’s local franchisee, initially said there was no evidence that the incident was racially motivated. But after an internal investigation, Georgas terminated the manager, server and another employee.
“We do not tolerate racism, bigotry or harassment of any nature,” the Applebee’s spokesman said. “We are reaching out to the guests involved to apologize directly.”
Applebee’s had the courage to stand up, admit its employees were wrong and take quick and decisive action. But what about the Independence Police Department? The police officer was flippant, dismissive and insensitive. Restaurant staff and the officer asked the women to pay their bill, leave and not come back. The women denied any wrongdoing but complied.
Lacking any proof of what had transpired, the officer chose to side with the Applebee’s employees who leveled the accusation against the diners.
As Brison says in the video, “This is what black people have to deal with.” Sadly, there’s a wealth of data and no end of examples that lend credence to her argument.
Independence police officials did not respond to multiple requests for comment about the officer’s actions.
The department should break its radio silence and follow Applebee’s lead: Offer a public apology to the women and require training for officers to ensure that this ugly episode is not repeated.
With Atlanta in the running for the new Amazon “HQ2” there is a lot of talk about the pitch being offered to the company to lure them to Georgia. The discussions on the topic have the value of all the incentives well above $1 billion. The discussions are also heavy with the topics of infrastructure upgrades, especially transit, which will be needed if Amazon indeed has Georgia on their mind.
At the same time, another discussion is brewing about the state of rural Georgia. The House Rural Development Council has been researching ways to push back against the population exodus from the rural parts of the state. This could also attract a pricy package of incentives to attract jobs and opportunity, especially in South Georgia.
This is a lot of money. This “b-word” is coming up way too often. Cobb County dropped nearly a billion to relocate the Braves. Mercedes-Benz Stadium cost well over $1 billion. A new discussion of a trucks-only highway between Atlanta and Macon could amount to an estimated $1.8 billion spent on a 40-mile road. When does the spending start to become troubling with the state controlled by a “fiscally conservative” party? How does the state wisely budget the money and still create an environment for business to flourish?
First of all, consider a few basics. Georgia has a tax credit package for the film industry. The state has issued over $200 million in bonds to fund its portion of the Savannah Harbor expansion. We’ve established business-friendly approaches to regulation and taxation. These are examples of broadly-distributed benefits. While the film industry program is specific to that one industry, it benefits anyone in that industry who operates in the state. The harbor expansion helps every Georgia company importing or exporting goods. In these instances, no one company benefits over its direct competitors.
Next, consider a few of the more targeted programs.
The HQ2 pitch and the electric vehicle tax credit are somewhat more divisive. Take the KIA plant in West Point. 6,000 Georgia jobs would be competing for market share against companies selling EVs and benefiting from a tax credit. Workers in the Walmart.com distribution center in Carroll County would be competing against the recipient of over $1 billion in tax credits and other incentives. Georgia businesses will be paying taxes which will in turn be used to help their competitors. How can this be considered fair?
Now let’s go to rural Georgia. The hot topics are education, broadband internet connectivity, and healthcare, specifically hospitals. While a package geared toward rural development would be more rural-specific and neglect urban areas of the state, there’s not much of an argument to be made that Atlanta is struggling to develop.
Focusing more on rural development would allow the state to use broader-based packages to benefit a larger area of the state. The Amazon deal would be beneficial to Atlanta and some, very little if we are honest, of the benefits would eventually trickle down to rural Georgia. Building a healthy economy in the rest of the state could have all the positive outcomes of the Amazon deal but without the strain on infrastructure and resources in Atlanta. Stimulated industry, including Georgia’s largest industry, agriculture, would benefit from, as well as be a benefit to, the expanded Savannah Harbor. Improved local economies in South Georgia would put less strain on the state treasury. Increased wages and opportunity would be a boost for the state treasury. The number of Georgians living in poverty would drop, and larger swaths of the state would be attractive to business. Georgia would have more than just Atlanta to offer the world.
The rural broadband expansion is essential. With greater access, schools can use resources that could increase educational opportunities to rural students. Healthcare providers could include telemedicine in their treatment arsenal. Companies could hire telecommuters who prefer to live outside the metro environment. Local small businesses could compete on a more level playing field. This one development could be a game changer for the state. But there has to be an incentive. Companies aren’t going to invest because there might be a customer base one day. They will invest if there is an incentive to do so. But if Georgia runs out of incentives after stadiums and Amazon and electric cars, where does that leave rural Georgia?
That leaves us with a choice of priorities. We can keep incentivizing Atlanta while ironically wondering what to do about traffic, water, parking, crime, transit and affordable housing, or we can look at other options. We can decentralize our economy as a state. We can offer a fair way for our local businesses to compete, a healthy way for our state to grow, and some sustainable answers to the problems currently plaguing South Georgians. Jim Powell of Young Harris