A top Tampa Bay economic developer warns legislation seeking to end state incentives meant to recruit and support Florida jobs could undermine decades of effort to make the Sunshine State a strong competitor and handicap long-term prospects for its economy.
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"Building a reputation in economic development is like building trust," says Craig Richard, CEO of the Tampa Hillsborough Economic Development Corp. (EDC) and a veteran of the wars among states to attract quality jobs. "It takes a long time to build up, but only a minute to be wiped out."
That’s what Richard fears with new legislation that, among other things, would do away with such cornerstone economic development organizations as Enterprise Florida (the state job recruiting agency), as well as Visit Florida (the state marketing arm for tourism), which has seen record tourism in recent years.
A specific bill to end such tax incentives and others in Florida will be considered Wednesday and Thursday in House and Senate committees in Tallahassee. If this becomes law? "We will go from serious contender in the minds of corporate relocation decision makers to not even being considered a player," cautions Richard.
At a state jobs summit held last week in Orlando, Gov. Rick Scott called on the gathering of regional and metro area economic developers across Florida to oppose the potentially devastating loss to the economy if the Legislature kills the use of incentives.
"We’re going to fight," says Richard, though it feels a bit late in the political game to take a stand. Many of the 30,000 new jobs Tampa Bay delivered in 2016 came about with the help of incentives, he notes. The legislation, he adds, would eliminate all three legs of Florida’s economic development stool by cutting incentives for job recruiting, help aimed at growing companies already here, and support for entrepreneurial startups.
Some damage is already done. Just the talk in Tallahassee, fueled by the rise of an anti-incentive campaign launched by House Speaker Richard Corcoran of Lutz, has weakened the volume and clout of the job expansion projects that Florida may be vying for in 2017 and beyond.
The EDC chief should know. In addition to his many years of economic development work for major metro areas in Georgia and Texas, where he competed against Florida, Richard will soon be the incoming chairman of the International Economic Development Council, the national group representing economic developers.
At a recent meeting of the IEDC in Jacksonville, Richard recalls how his peers already were teasing him of their plans to visit Florida on the sly in the future to poach companies with their own coffers of job incentives.
Should Florida appear vulnerable, Richard suggests it is not unrealistic to expect Texas — an aggressive jobs competitor with Florida — to open its own recruitment office in this state. That’s what Texas did in California, Richard says, to great effect. He also cites past decisions by Illinois to cut its incentives and raise business taxes, a combination that continues to plague the Midwest state with an anti-business reputation.
If Florida is getting wobbly-kneed about tax incentives to support job relocations or expansions, site selectors and corporations once pleased with Florida prospects will be happy to turn their attention to those states eager and willing to negotiate incentive deals for better jobs.
Richard joined the Tampa Hillsborough EDC last summer after holding similar positions in Atlanta, Houston and Dallas. He argues that if everybody stopped offering incentives at once, then the playing field of competition to attract new jobs would remain even.
If Florida ends incentives on its own? That’s unilateral disarmament, Richard says.
Here’s another way to describe it: Economic suicide.
"The reality is," says Richard, "that this is not corporate welfare" — the oft-used but misleading phrase for job incentives. "It is corporate competition."
In Tallahassee, it’s hard to know what’s really driving lawmakers. Gov. Rick Scott on Tuesday personally criticized House Speaker Corcoran, accusing him of using the issue to further his political career. "It’s pretty clear, if you’re not caring about people’s jobs you must be caring about something else," Scott said.
Corcoran responded, saying: "We were elected to do what is right and clean up government, put an end to the waste of taxpayer money and end the culture of corruption."
Where do Floridians seeking decent paying jobs stand amid such finger pointing? Lower than they should be on the list of priorities.
Contact Robert Trigaux at rtrigaux@tampabay.com. Follow @venturetampabay.
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