Featured Columnists
Expansion, Not Elimination
by Randy Gordon
We are in a time of double-digit unemployment rates, significant underemployment, minimal economic diversity, budget deficits, and a record-high of inventory of vacant business and industrial space. Expansion, not elimination of the California Enterprise Zone program that rewards businesses and employees for locating and expanding in economically challenged neighborhoods, including a large portion of Long Beach, should be encouraged.
The California Enterprise Zone (EZ) Program does exactly that, which is why we will be asking you to follow our lead and contact your representatives in Sacramento and urge them to protect the Enterprise Zone Program and oppose any attempt to dissolve or decrease enterprise zone areas or incentives.
Tax incentives that are part of Enterprise Zones include such things as equipment, hiring, worker credits, tax deductions, and preference points that can help them secure state-sponsored contracts. In other words, tools that attract businesses and promote economic development.
While there is consensus that our economy is recovering, there is very limited agreement on the pace and intensity of this recovery. The utility of tools, like the ones mentioned, is real and significant and weigh on the mind of business owners as they make practical decisions about where to create or cut jobs, open or close plants, invest or deleverage themselves.
In fact, even before the downturn, states that didn’t have Enterprise Zone were routinely losing high-paying manufacturing jobs to states with Enterprise Zones. If you think incentives matter in normal times of economic growth, imagine how much they matter in the aftermath of a severe recession, which is what we are faced with now.
Since 41 other states have their own version of Enterprise Zone programs, and lower tax rates and looser regulatory structures, we need, for the sake of our competitive advantage and the well-being of our community, to protect and strengthen our own Enterprise Zone program in order to continue to move Long Beach in a direction of prosperity and retaining businesses located throughout the Enterprise Zone program areas…
...and that’s Strictly Business.
Randy Gordon is President and CEO of the Long Beach Area Chamber of Commerce
|