Learn to track cities and states' use of corporate tax breaks April 3

The National Press Club Journalism Institute and the Professional Development team will offer a workshop on tracking corporate welfare in cities and states Monday, April 3, from 9:30 a.m. to 11 a.m. in the Club’s Zenger Room. Registration is required; tickets are $5 for NPC members and $10 for general public. Register here.

States and localities spend tens of billions of dollars in corporate tax breaks in the name of economic development, on everything from malls to factories to Amazon warehouses. But the costs of such giveaways have often been hidden; taxpayers have not been able to weigh them against other priorities. That will change when a new government accounting standard, GASB Statement No. 77 on Tax Abatement Disclosures, takes effect and starts generating data this spring.

Is a school district in your community losing revenue to tax breaks for a new employer at the same time it has to accommodate a flood of new students because of that employer? Is your state or municipality participating in the new accounting regime? If not, why not?

Join Greg LeRoy of the non-profit watchdog, Good Jobs First, to learn how the new data will appear (from more than 50,000 government ENTITIEs) and also learn about Good Jobs First's massive database of company-specific tax-break records, Subsidy Tracker.