At Wednesday’s CNBC debate, Gov. Rick Perry said government should get out of the way and “let consumers pick winners and losers.”
Too bad his economic record doesn’t reflect that, even remotely. Through the Texas Enterprise Fund (TEF), Perry’s office handed out huge tax breaks and grant packages to lure companies to move their operations to Texas—i.e., picking winners and losers, and none too well, according to a new report from Texans for Public Justice reviewed by reviewed by Good Jobs First:
A summary that Governor Perry’s office published in August suggests that $440 million in taxpayer TEF grants have created 59,600 Texas jobs. Perry claimed in an October presidential debate that TEF has produced 54,600 jobs. Putting aside five TEF projects that TPJ asserts are fraudulent job claims and a sixth project that appears to be undergoing an audit, TPJ found evidence that TEF had created 22,349 jobs by the end of 2010. That number amounts to 37 percent of the job claims made by the Governor’s Office.
Analyzing the 65 TEF projects, the new report found that:
- 24 projects (37 percent) failed to deliver on their original 2010 job promises;
- 17 projects (26 percent) complied with their 2010 job commitments;
- 11 failing projects were terminated prematurely (17 percent);
- 7 projects are troubled (11 percent), usually because they defaulted on 2010 job pledges but covered the shortfall with job credits earned by exceeding their job targets in past years;
- 5 projects (8 percent) were found by TPJ to fraudulently claim that they created more jobs than they actually did (this category includes most of TEF’s largest grants); and
- One project claimed “new” jobs that had hiring dates predating its TEF contract.
