Disclose names of corporate suitors

Secrecy is often the default position among taxpayer-funded government agencies of all kinds. That’s why open meetings and open records laws are necessary and why maintaining transparency in government operations is an ongoing task requiring constant vigilance.

So it is somewhat predictable that members of the Economic Development and Growth Engine board would like to offer an extra incentive — confidentiality — to companies that might relocate to Shelby County or expand their operations here.

The EDGE board has voted to seek guidance from the attorney general’s office to determine if the name of a company applying for incentives, its parent company and its address can be hidden from the public but revealed to the board. Nice try, but no. Wouldn’t you want to know whether tax relief, infrastructure improvements and other incentives that drain public resources were being offered to Facebook or the Trump Corporation — just to name two controversial companies.

Give the board credit for not seeking to withhold other information about the prospect such as the industry, the number of jobs the company plans to create, and the average pay of each job.

But that simply is not enough information for the public to evaluate a company’s request, especially during a time in which the verifiable benefits to the public are being questioned.

Wouldn’t you want to know whether those incentives were being offered to Facebook or the Trump Corporation — just to name two controversial companies.

Besides, recent research by economist Timothy Bartik at the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research revealed that the correlation between incentives delivered by states and their unemployment rate and income levels is insignificant. And more often than not, incentives are handed out to companies that would have relocated anyway — without getting anything in return.

No one can accuse Shelby County — or Tennessee, for that matter -- of not wanting more new job-creating relocations and expansions. Both are players in the battle for new industry.

According to the Updike study, Tennessee is the fourth most generous suitor for new business — 105 percent higher than the national average. Shelby County and Memphis had more active property tax-forgiving arrangements than any other area in Tennessee in 2016.

Public employees whose benefits have been cut to help balance the city budget, public education advocates, advocates for improvements to the infrastructure and others raise legitimate questions about the benefits these deals deliver.

The question of whether an arrangement actually might end up being a burden on local government budgets always looms over the decision. Clawing back tax breaks can be a cumbersome and complicated process. The history of attempts to recoup incentives after companies have failed to deliver what they promised is rife with failures.

And companies, like people, have reputations that may figure one way or another in the evaluation of whether or not to welcome them into the community. Obviously, new companies and expansions to existing firms can have serious impacts on a community’s well-being.

Give the EDGE board credit for seeking an opinion from the attorney general’s office regarding the legality of its proposal. Whatever the answer may be to that question, however, it would not be in the public’s interest to keep the name of an applicant under wraps.

It’s the public’s money that is being offered. The public has a right and a need to know the name of the intended recipient.