economic development

RALEIGH – A lawsuit filed Thursday by the North Carolina Institute for Constitutional Law offers the prospect of scaling back state incentive policies that hinder rather than hasten economic development,…

The budget proposals from the senate and governor return North Carolina to a path of rapid spending growth. Education and Medicaid continue to expand, but economic development joins them as an important growth area. Government spending on a per capita basis retreated after Fiscal Year 1999-2000, but will be 28 percent higher in FY2006-07 than it was in FY2002-03.

The North Carolina General Assembly is returning to Raleigh for a special session on economic development. Rather than rush to push targeted tax credits and incentives for a few, lawmakers should pursue a broader examination of the factors under their control that really influence state economic growth. The wrong direction is to enact any set of policies that increase the state bureaucracy or the ranks of lobbyists seeking to arrange special “deals” for their industrial clients.