Wake County GOP Slips On Red Hat Banana Peel
The Charlotte City Council isn’t alone in doling out lucrative incentive deals and perk packages for select companies, rolling dice with taxpayer money by trying to pick winners and losers so politicians can claim they’ve created jobs.
While our Democrat-led city council was busy throwing boatloads of taxpayer loot at big banana Chiquita, the Republican-majority Wake County Commission was tossing fistfuls of the same to tech titan Red Hat. Four of the commission’s five-member Republican majority – Paul Coble, Tony Gurley (who are running, respectively, for Congress and Lt. Governor as supposed conservatives), Phil Matthews and Joe Bryan – voted to approve a $675,000 incentive package for Red Hat to keep its company headquarters in Raleigh. The commission’s two Democrats, Betty Lou Ward and James West, also joined the perks party.
Along with the county’s largess, Red Hat is also in line to receive nearly $1 million from the City of Raleigh and upwards of $15 million in incentives from the state. As part of the sweet deals, Red Hat is supposed to add more than 500 jobs and invest $30 million in company renovations and new equipment.
Meanwhile, the Republican-dominated Henderson County Commission is set this week to ponder forking over a nearly $4 million dollar perks package to help land an unnamed manufacturing company, whose officials say will create at least 125 new jobs and pump $115 million into the region.
Make no mistake, folks: the game of crony crapitalism has no political party bias.
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