(Center Square) — Tennessee pledged more than $60 million in FastTrack economic incentive grants to businesses this year, after pledging more than $200 million in grants to businesses in 2021.
FastTrack grants are state grants sent to local governments for specific infrastructure improvements. Or to companies that help offset the costs of expanding or moving to the state with the goal of increasing the number of full-time jobs and average wages for jobs available in the area. .
However, economists say: those incentives Money paid to businesses doesn’t help the country or provide economic benefits, but academic research shows that they do. Political Contributions and Political Profits To the politicians who lead the deal.
Tennessee Governor Bill Lee keynote speaker at the governors’ meeting on economic development that ended Tuesday at Nashville’s Omni Hotel, but Main Street Nashville reported The amount of the incentive was not mentioned at the conference celebrating the projects that received those grants.
The Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development has reached an agreement with businesses to award grants based on investments and new jobs associated with moving businesses to Tennessee or expanding within the state.
The department then announced projects coming to the state in a press release, like the recent announcement that TN Composites is expanding in Dixon County. However, TNECD refuses to announce the incentive grants that accompany the project when it announces them, instead adding incentives to its database. project with contract and project pending contract.
This year, we added $60 million in incentive deals to our database. That includes his $6 million trading group last month. Costs taxpayers $22.5 million.
Last year’s total didn’t include, but did include, nearly $1 billion in incentives for Ford to build the $5.6 billion Blue Oval City electric truck facility outside Memphis. $65 million With state funding for Oracle’s new location in Nashville, $60 million The new Ultium Cells project adjacent to General Motors’ Spring Hill plant.
It also likely doesn’t include incentives for the Tennessee Titans. New estimated $2.2 billion stadium in Nashville.
