As local unions grumble ORC applies for extension on tax exemption

As if hiring out of state construction workers instead of the struggling local labor force isn’t insult enough, ORC wants to continue to stiff the local taxing districts by extending their enterprise zone tax exemption. Scheduled on the Port Commission agenda for this Thursday, ORC will argue to extend the automatic three year extension, plus the two year construction period or total of five years, for another three years.

The little I know about this process I believe the local taxing must agree to any extension. Considering how strapped for cash all of them are, it will be a crying shame if they acquiesce and continue to cut services to the rest of us paying taxes to accommodate ORC. The primary issue is how recipients of tax exemptions spend their savings.

As David Cay Johnston noted on Olbermann.

What‘s important is how we spend our tax dollars and whether our tax system is encouraging investment in things that produce jobs. Or is it encouraging you to buy unproductive things like real estate and to move your factory to China so that you can make more profit by hiring low-cost workers there while destroying work here?

So, we need to get away from this debate that this is class warfare—

and, by the way, if it‘s class warfare, it‘s being waged in both directions

and to the idea of how do we distribute the burdens of government. And the best way to do that is create a tax system that encourages more investment here at home and more jobs. And right now, we‘re focused on a tax system that just lets you save money so you can spend it in unproductive ways.

If the tax savings is going into the pockets of ORC backer The Sentient Group and not being reinvested into Coos County in the form of jobs for local workers, then it isn’t benefiting the taxing districts or Coos County. If the millions being invested in the processing plant are for steel purchased from Wisconsin and out of state electrical and plumbing contractors and other out of state materials suppliers, how is that money trickling to the local workers not hired?

So will our ‘leaders’ genuflect to ORC some more or are local union complaints starting to be heard?