The Wisconsin press is relaying a "major jobs announcement" for a future project in the state, this time from publisher Quad Graphics in Sussex, but forgive me for not breaking out the party hats on this one. Much like a number of other previous announcements, this announcement comes another handout from the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC)
The company will be eligible to earn $15.7 million in state tax credits from the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. as part of the planned expansion.....Earlier this year, Quad won a long-term contract from Hearst Magazines to print 20 of its 21 titles, including Cosmopolitan, Elle, Esquire and Good Housekeeping. It also won a contract to print additional titles for Time Inc.
So Quad Graphics already had a contract in place that would have required an expansion anyway, before they received one tax break. And if you do the math, the WEDC package translates to tax credits of $31,400 a job- well past whatever profit would be gained from hiring another employee. In addition, WEDC allows Quad Graphics 5 years to add the jobs, and I don't see any wage requirements listed in the jobs that need to be added in order to grab these tax credits.Let me take a step back and remind you that WEDC was created by special legislation by Gov Scott Walker and the new WisGOP Legislature in early 2011, even before Walker "dropped the bomb" with the union-busting Act 10, and this legislation made Walker the Chairman of the new WEDC Board. Since then, WEDC has been plagued through a revolving door of executives, the loss of millions of taxpayer dollars due to bad loans and a lack of accountability, and allegations of pay-to-play corruption, as a majority of WEDC's tax incentives just happened to find its way into the hands of Scott Walker's donors.
This got so bad that Walker ended up asking the Legislature to remove him as the WEDC Board Chair, a move the GOP-run Legislature approved of, to try to keep Mr. Unintimidated from being held accountable for WEDC's numerous failures on his (now-failing) presidential bid.
Now add in these details, which are conveniently buried in the bottom of the Journal-Sentinel story.
We Energies has asked state regulators for a special economic development rider that would help lower energy costs for Quad as it expands in the state. In a filing last month, the utility asked the Public Service Commission to approve a rider that would allow Quad to pay market prices in the wholesale power market for the additional energy its uses as part of its planned expansion.Quad, which has struggled as magazines' circulation has declined, reported a net loss of $80.3 million on $2.2 billion in revenue for the six-month period ended June 30. The company posted net income of $18.6 million on revenue of $4.9 billion in 2014.
So we're giving away millions of taxpayer dollars for a company with billions in revenue, and that is expanding without the need for those tax credits. In a state where we just had to cut $250 million from the UW System, having public schools and prisons suffering from staff shortages, and a budget that has $1.1 billion in unspecified cuts built into it that have yet to be realized.WEDC was involved in another "future jobs announcement" this week regarding a new warehouse for Dollar General in Janesville, which features another $5.5 million in potential WEDC write-offs, along with local tax breaks and land gifts from the Janesville area. And the timing of these announcements are very interesting, because last Wednesday, WEDC was the subject of a legislative hearing related to another blistering audit by the Legislative Audit Bureau. And in that hearing, both Republicans and (especially) Democrats expressed anger at WEDC's continued inability to follow state laws on tracking loans, grants and job-making progress,along with the waste of taxpayer dollars from previously failed projects and questionable loans, and the fact that Wisconsin was at the bottom of the Midwest for job growth under Walker, despite a large amount of allegedly pro-business legislation, which included the creation of WEDC.