Our friends at Good Jobs First have been fighting corporate welfare from the leftward side of America’s political spectrum for many years, specializing in doing the hard and necessary work of data collection and analysis. Their Tax Break Tracker is an invaluable tool for anyone involved in economic development policy reform.
Recently, CEA President John C. Mozena collaborated with Christine Wen of Good Jobs First on an op-ed in the Detroit News that used their data to make the case against Michigan’s model that drained $111.1 million from the state’s public school funding mechanisms in 2019. The CEA and Good Jobs First may start from different philosophical first principles, but when it comes to corporate welfare we’re happy to find common ground with them. As Mozena and Wen wrote:
While we come at this issue from different starting points on the political spectrum, we agree on this much: Michigan’s public education funding system shouldn’t be bearing the cost of the state’s corporate welfare giveaways.