By: Mark Glennon*
The State of Illinois on Monday proudly announced it had succeeded in bringing Cronus Chemical Company into the state to build a new fertilizer plant.
Cronus will get $52 million in various incentives from the state, according to the Associated Press and other sources.
When operational, the plant will employ 175 full-time people at the plant, and another 25 full-time office jobs will come to Chicago. Construction of the plant also will employ about 1,000, but those jobs are temporary and matter much less.
That’s $52 million for 200 permanent jobs comes to $260,000 per job. Illinois has about 428,000 people unemployed. So, at the rate per job that it cost taxpayers to lure Cronus we would end unemployment at a cost of $111,280,000,000.
Scary to know there are people out there who think it’s sensible to spend that much to buy off employers into moving here. Scarier, still, to know they can vote. Utterly terrifying to know they have the checkbook in Springfield.
*Mark Glennon is founder of WirePoints
Expect no retraction or apology. This what they do.
The state’s existing buyout program for its own pensions is the precedent for Chicago, which should be a warning: Look out for similar exaggerated claims and shoddy analysis.
more specifics on the time frame of incentives, and comparison to the existing tax revenue projection of the property are needed. The life of the plant could be what, 40-50 yrs?
Mike- That’s a very fair point, but we don’t have that info because that’s not the rationale that’s being used to justify it. The rationale being used is job creation, and $260k/permanent job is exorbitant by any standard.
just one (poor) way to run the figures given… 1 “permanent” job at $260k/30 yr. “career” is less than $9k a year, **if the incentive is a total**. My only point is the figures given to/by AP are near meaningless.