Pat Garofalo, Author at Public Seminar

Politics

Bass Pro Blocked from Reeling in More Power

Merger between Sportsman’s and Great Outdoors Group hits FTC snag

December 10, 2021 • by Pat Garofalo

On December 2, 2021, there was some under-the-radar good news for local communities and consumers: The Great Outdoors Group and Sportsman’s Warehouse called off a proposed merger, after scrutiny from the Federal Trade Commission and attorneys general in several states, including Tennessee, Pennsylvania, Alaska, Colorado, Iowa, and California. Great Outdoors Group ...

Politics

How to Save Local Retail

Or how to start, anyway

November 29, 2021 • by Pat Garofalo

With the holiday shopping season upon us, it seems like a good time to consider local retail. Small retailers are struggling: They’ve been punished by the pandemic, of course, but the root of the problem goes back much further to the active disinterest by the powers that be in doing anything ...

Economy

Corporate Handouts Are Leverage

States and cities can make free money less free, if they try.

November 22, 2021 • by Pat Garofalo

Last month, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, as part of an ongoing fight he has with the Republican-controlled state legislature over the minimum wage, released an executive order requiring corporations that receive tax incentives or grants from the state to pay the same minimum wage that state contractors must pay ($13.50 an hour, increasing to ...

Politics

A CEO (Allegedly) Admitted to the Scam

Was Domo offered millions to stay in Utah—without ever planning to leave?

November 15, 2021 • by Pat Garofalo

As readers here well know, a key fact about corporate tax subsidies is that they don’t actually influence corporate behavior: Research shows that nearly all of them simply pay corporate leaders to do what they would have done anyway for other reasons. The trouble is that CEOs and executives like to ...

Technology

Water Is Life, and Also a Trade Secret

Google won’t tell you how much water it uses and an Oregon city has its back

November 5, 2021 • by Pat Garofalo

Google may have been cowed into turning down subsidies for new office buildings in a few major cities, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t up to its usual shenanigans outside of those metro areas. Out in Oregon, in fact, Google is embroiled in a controversy in which it’s gotten a town to ...

Economy

Five Years of Silence

How states and corporations use public records exemptions to cover up deal details

November 1, 2021 • by Pat Garofalo

The Tennessee legislature last week approved a massive new deal for a Ford electric vehicle and battery plant at a site about 50 miles east of Memphis. The legislation creates a “megasite” authority that will dole out $884 million in state funds: $500 million in corporate handouts to Ford and ...

Politics

Media Secret Keepers

Why local journalists don’t care more about corporate subsidy mysteries

October 22, 2021 • by Pat Garofalo

On October 15, 2021, the Tampa Bay Times published an article explaining that the St. Petersburg, Florida city council granted nearly half a million dollars plus a potential future property tax exemption to an unnamed retail corporation, a “mystery company” as the lede puts it. Reading between the lines, it seems the ...

Sports

Bear Fight in Chicago

We all need to remember that we may love our sports teams but they don’t love us back

October 8, 2021 • by Pat Garofalo

Football season is well and truly underway, and so, apparently, is football stadium subsidy season. First it was the Buffalo Bills, and now it’s the Chicago Bears, whose owners started the process of purchasing land that would allow the team to move from its current home at Soldier Field in ...

Technology

What’s Google Up To?

It says it turned down subsidies in three cities. What gives?

October 4, 2021 • by Pat Garofalo

Tech giant Google recently announced that it bought a building in New York City in a massive $2.1 billion deal, which is the largest real estate purchase in the U.S. since the pandemic began. Google also said it would not avail itself of the corporate subsidy programs offered by New ...

Technology

Facebook’s Data Center Fluff

A snazzy new public relations push can’t cover up the truth

September 27, 2021 • by Pat Garofalo

Last week Facebook rolled out a new website dedicated to the awesomeness of its data centers, the large facilities it builds to house all the data it collects from you, me, and everyone else it surveils on the internet. I’m not kidding. Facebook built and published an entire website extolling the virtues of ...

Politics

How Corporate Subsidies Sink Small Businesses

The Alabama insurance market shows how tax breaks benefit dominant corporations

September 20, 2021 • by Pat Garofalo

One of the more pernicious effects of states chucking huge sums of money at dominant corporations is that the lawmakers doing so are harming their own local businesses. Smaller outlets that already face an array of challenges when it comes to competing with the big guys have to just sit ...

How Corporate Subsidies Sink Small Businesses

Capitalism

Welcome to the Chip Wars

Intel wants another HQ2 contest, this time for chip manufacturers.

September 15, 2021 • by Pat Garofalo

_____ The Amazon “HQ2” contest—in which hundreds of cities threw everything including the kitchen sink at Amazon in the hopes of landing a new facility—was a national embarrassment showing just how tight corporate America’s grip on economic development policy is (at least until New York said no way). In a recent interview with ...