There's an interesting article in the San Jose Mercury News. As far as I can tell, the state promised to give certain companies (Intel, Cypress, etc.) a tax break if they kept their operations in California as opposed to sensibly relocating to an area that is less hostile to business. So the CEOs decided to take California up on the offer and kept some of their operations in the state that otherwise would have ended up elsewhere. Now a handful of Democrats are yowling that companies are getting tax refunds, even though the revised law was approved by the entire Democrat-controlled Assembly. I don't know the details of the situation, but it seems to me that if state politicos want to keep well-paying jobs in California, this isn't exactly the right approach. At the very least, they could say "Okay, we're going to try to deny you the refunds but want to work with you to make California more competitive in terms of retaining jobs." Of course they're not. Here's an excerpt: http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/10736766.htm?1c "For T.J. Rodgers, the chief executive of San Jose-based Cypress Semiconductor, quibbling over the refunds is an affront -- one of the many reasons he has said ``Adios, California'' and moved the bulk of his operations to Texas and Minnesota. He said the 4,000-employee company paid $4.3 million in sales tax and invested about $52 million in its Silicon Valley plant while the tax credit was in place. Of that, the company has received about $3 million back in refunds. ``I can promise Ms. Migden something: She will never, ever, ever have to worry about my company building a plant in California again and getting insulted when we ask not to be taxed for the privilege of building a plant,'' he said. ``We'll go somewhere else where they not only do not tax us for building a plant, but they actually give us incentives and credits and subsidies to create jobs.''" I interviewed TJ Rodgers about just this: http://news.com.com/Chip+off+the+block/2008-1006_3-5215272.html Q: What's the business climate like in California today? A: Let me give you an example. When the political pygmies fight with each other in Sacramento and change the workers' compensation rules every few years, it's a big jerk around for industry. Once we get our payroll set up, we have to change it again. The local county and city basically are just bears to deal with in trying to run a business and build things. -Declan _______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)
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