Tag: EDGE

Memphis officials gave IKEA nearly $10 million in incentives to set up shop there, but company officials reportedly can’t do what they promised. So, IKEA officials are giving up some of their previously approved 11-year tax abatement, according to The Daily Memphian. IKEA did not hire the number of jobs or pay the level of wages it promised city and county officials in exchange for lesser property tax payments, the website went on to say. “As was indicated in IKEA’s most recent Annual Report to EDGE for the year-ending Dec. 31, 2018, while IKEA met the Capital Investment commitment, it was unable to meet the Job and Wage commitment,” The Daily Memphian quoted attorney Chad Wilgenbusch as saying. “IKEA ended 2018 with 147 employees on site, 28 jobs short of its commitment to bring 175 new jobs to Memphis. Employees were making a median average wage of $36,944 at the end of 2018, $4,067 short of the IKEA’s commitment to pay employees $41,011 without benefits.” According to localmemphis.com, the Economic Development Growth Engine, which awarded the incentives, says “process standards would reduce their 11-year PILOT by a year.” “IKEA was originally awarded a PILOT for 11 years, 10 months for real…

Memphis taxpayers may soon know less about the companies that want corporate welfare in exchange for expanding or relocating their business to Memphis, according to The Memphis Commercial Appeal. This, the paper went on to say, depends on a pending opinion from the state attorney general and how he interprets Tennessee’s open records law, the paper went on to say. That pending opinion will weigh in on whether Memphis officials can keep hidden three pieces of information from the public — the name of the company applying for an incentive, its parent company, and its address. EDGE board members, of course, will know who the company is, the paper reported. “Instead, a ‘code name’ would be used to identify the company,” The Commercial Appeal said. “Other information such as the industry, the number of jobs the company plans to create and the average pay of each job would still be released when it is provided to the board.” Mark Beutelschies, legal counsel for EDGE, told the paper EDGE board members will still need all the information to make sure there are no conflicts of interest. “We want to get an explicit understanding from the state that if we held these…

There’s a lot of tussling going on in Memphis as the city’s movers and shakers debate the best ways to disburse corporate welfare. According to the Memphis Daily News, a seven-member city group is studying the effectiveness of EDGE – the city-county Economic Development Growth Engine. EDGE hands out tax abatement incentives. Members of this group want to know if they should take the city out of EDGE and create a city Industrial Development Board to make things more efficient, the website reported. Members of the group met for the first time this week. Council member Reid Hedgepeth said economic development interests need a “czar” to help run things. “Now is the time to streamline the process so that we have this czar that can come and say, ‘Memphis can do this deal. I say we can compete at this level. We’re ready. Here’s the application, Turn it in. Let’s go,’” the website quoted Boyd as saying. “Right now, at the rate we are going, everybody says ‘that’s not my responsibility’ or ‘I can’t do that’ or ‘I didn’t know we wanted to turn that in and compete on this deal.’ Time out on excuses.” Eric Miller, with the Greater…