Tracking Subsidies,Promoting Accountability in
EconomicDevelopments > Subsidy Tracker
The first national compilation of company-specific information on economic development subsidy awards from around the country.
Subsidy Tracker 2 collects data on economic development subsidies that governmental bodies across the United States are reporting in accordance with a new accounting rule adopted by the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) in 2015.
GASB Statement 77 requires governments that employ Generally Accepted Accounting Principles to report on the aggregate amount of annual tax revenue they are losing as a result of tax abatements.
Subsidy Tracker 2-- which complements the original Subsidy Tracker's collection of company-specific entries -- will periodically add new data as governments make their GASB 77 disclosures.
We hope this information will be useful in setting fiscal priorities for localities and states.
Good Jobs First in September 2017 unveiled "Subsidy Tracker 2" - a new online database for tax-break spending records issued thanks to GASB Statement 77 on Tax Abatement Disclosures.
Statement 77 is the first time the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) has set forth a rule for governments to account for revenues lost to any kind of corporate tax break for economic development. Good Jobs First was
honored in 2015 for its leading role in this landmark reform.
To help activists, journalists and public officials navigate this whole new world of disclosures, Good Jobs First today also publicly posted 51 state-specific "roadmaps" detailing everything one needs to get started exploring the data. (For those who have privately received iterations of the roadmaps over the past year: today's postings include many state entries that have been updated to reflect early disclosures.)
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"Building on the seven-year success of our original Subsidy Tracker database, which focuses especially on subsidy awards by company, our new Subsidy Tracker 2 is specific to places only, since GASB 77 does not require disclosure of corporate recipients," said Greg LeRoy, GJF's executive director. "We want taxpayers to have easy public access to this data, and to enable researchers, journalists and policymakers to have one unified hub for comparative analysis."
"We estimate that 50,000 local and state governments will disclose the loss of revenue due to economic development tax breaks under GASB 77," said Scott Klinger, GJF's GASB 77 Activation Coordinator.
"But as our roadmaps detail, how states treat the financial reports issued by local governments varies greatly. Most states collect the reports, some even stress-test them. But only one state-New Mexico-has created a system to collect GASB 77 data electronically and publish it online."
Very few governments have yet issued their first round of GASB 77 data, so this opening version of Subsidy Tracker 2 captures only about 200 governments, including only one state government (New York).
"By Halloween and Thanksgiving, we'll see a data-tsunami," said Klinger, "Thousands of places per week will be filing their financial reports!"
Interested in our impressions of the data so far? See GJF's "GASB 77 Chronicles" here: http://bit.ly/2hrqyN6
If you appreciate the value this path-breaking work, please consider making a financial contribution to Good Jobs First here. |
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Thank you for your interest.
Sincerely,
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Greg LeRoy, Good Jobs First
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