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Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Where Are The Jobs?
WTHR's Bob Segal continues a story he has been tracking for the past year. Where are the jobs? He's talking about the more than 100,000 jobs the Indiana Economic Development Corporation claims have been created through the economic development incentive efforts of the agency. Segal has learned it is like pulling teeth getting Mitch Roob's agency to produce documents to back up the job claims. Waiting as long as six months to get some information, Segal finds information such as the positions created and the pay for those jobs have been redacted from the documents. His year-long story has led him to conclude as many as 40% of the jobs claimed to have been created never materialized. Looks like good campaign fodder for Mitch Daniels' opponents should he decide to run for president in 2012. The failed privatization effort at FSSA also provides good campaign fodder for opponents. Remember who was responsible for that deal? Yep, Mitch Roob.
Mitch played the same shell game on the toll road lease and where all of that money has gone. Maybe Segal can try to find out if any is left, or if it all went into junk bonds, as some allege.
ReplyDeleteMakybe someone should look into the federal governments role in all of this.
ReplyDeleteWhy has the economy crashed? Why is the economy NOT recovering? Why did so many companies go out of business? Why is no one hiring?
I think we all know the answers to these questions.
Today the Governor's other mouthpiece of Indiana's wonderful job growth, Workforce Development, issued the October Unemployment report. The Indianapolis Star has the title of the article on the home page as "Indiana's unemployment picture brightens after seven months", even though the rate only dropped .02%. Back in July, I believe it was, DWD said the .01% increase was "statistically insignificant", but now the Star is saying .02% is enough to "brighten" the situation. Please.
ReplyDeleteThe "Leadership Team" and new commissioner, Mark Everson, at DWD has been just as bad as Mitch Roob and the gang at IEDC and the Governor himself in rah-rahing Indiana's supposed jobs successes while simultaneously downplaying the stagnant unemployment numbers (any drops in those numbers at this point are because of the major drops of claimants off of unemployment).
And because of DWD's recent history of lying and distorting how well (or, more precisely, how bad) the unemployment system has been doing, I am not overly willing to believe their statements about how Indiana is leading the country in creating private-sector jobs.
I wanted to get this out there as well -- Indiana's DWD, for 3rd Qtr. 2010, got about 29% of its unemployment determinations (denying or allowing claimants) done correctly, which is currently the worst in the country. DWD was 49th/53 (states and territories) in getting claimants paid within 21 days, and 39th/53 in the country with less than 50% of determinations denying or allowing claimants done within 21 days as is federally-required.
Starting January 1, all employers doing business with Indiana who pay into the Unemployment Trust Fund will pay $21 per employee to the federal government because Indiana was only the second state in this recession to have the fund go bankrupt. Indiana will also have to pay upwards of $100 million for interest next year to the feds for our bankrupt fund that will have to come from some place other than unemployment taxes. Keep in mind Indiana OVERPAID claimants by $1.157 BILLION from 2006 to 2009, of which DWD was responsible for $859 MILLION of that amount. We now owe the federal government over $1.85 BILLION.
Our island of prosperity in the desert of the Midwest is quickly sinking beneath the sands.
What I would like to hear about is what tax abatements were granted, yet never clawed back when the promises of employment increases never occurred.
ReplyDeleteI think a bunch o'tax abatements were granted, employer promises went unfulfilled, and the State failed in it's fiduciary duty to claw back those lost tax revenues for the taxpayers.
Had Enough, we used to hear updates, all the time, on how much interest the Stupid Moves money was earning.
ReplyDeleteRecently, not so much.
You may be right about the low credit quality of the issues. I wonder how many went into default?
Check with the State Treasurer's Office, which actually controls the investment of those funds.
ReplyDelete