The Bad News Report

[15895]

Johnny Harris is a democrat who resigned from the airport authority due to conflict of interest. I remember certain council members or figures claiming Harris was in it just for development and I think I remember Cannon being quiet and saying he wanted the state and City to work something out. (I think, don't quote me on that one)

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2013/12/17/4551615/2-resign-before-airport-commissions.html

[nowensone]

Perhaps another upside (one can always hope) is that the inexplicable automall zoning approval along the LRT receives some new scrutiny.

[atlrvr]

Not "bad news" per se, but Toyota had selected Charlotte as 1 of 4 finalists for in North American HQ relocation from suburban LA.  It is going to Dallas instead of Charlotte, Atlanta, or Denver, which were the other finalists.  Texas apparantly offered a huge package.  4,000 jobs are being moved in Dallas (Irving, TX really).

[Niner National]

Interesting. I didn't even know we were in the running. That would have been nice.

[dubone]

Well, picking Irving, we can see which company Toyota wants to stay closest to.  

 

Here's hoping my next car will be from a company headquartered in Palo Alto, CA.

[atlrvr]

Well, picking Irving, we can see which company Toyota wants to stay closest to.  

 

Here's hoping my next car will be from a company headquartered in Palo Alto, CA.

 

^Eh...per Forbes...

 

One more thing: Texas remains the reputed frontrunner for landing the giant Tesla “gigafactory” that promises to be a multi-billion-dollar boon for whichever of four states — also including Nevada, New Mexico and Arizona — manages to land Elon Musk’s dream fabrication and research facility.

[dubone]

That is bait Tesla is using to open up the restrictions on marketing in TX.  

 

Also, Tesla's factory is part of their vertically integrated business model, so those batteries would not be going to Toyota headquarters.  They do have a supply arrangement with Tesla, but that would be from factory to factory.  If they wanted to stay close to Tesla leadership, they would instead be building their US HQ in, say, Cupertino.  Instead they are moving from Silicon Valley to the land of oil company HQs.   Toyota execs will be golfing and guffawing with oil executives as part of the Dallas business community rather than with that of Tesla and technology firms. 

 

http://bizbeatblog.dallasnews.com/2014/04/toyota-relocation-will-be-one-of-north-texas-largest.html/

[carolinagarnet]

It's an interesting message given Toyota's traditional lead in auto technology and sustainability. Rick Perry has been to Maryland and Virginia to court companies on several occasions and he even has radio ads up here touting the state's favorable tax laws and strong workforce. I guess he can afford to do that with the state of Texas' economy.

[Norm2]

So apparently Chiquita was in talks about merger possibilities while they were talking to the city of Charlotte about moving the HQ here. I smell something fishy.

 

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2014/04/30/4876365/chiquita-was-exploring-merger.html#.U2F4UPlkTTo

[kermit]

^ I smell the city and state getting their incentives back...

[dubone]

Well, keeping exploring multiple options is one thing, but if they were truly engineering what eventually happened, I'm pretty sure their leadership would have remained the same, and they would have made sure that it was not required for incentives for it to be a global HQ.   Companies always explore merger opportunities, and let's face it, companies that relocate for tax incentives are usually not the companies that are doing great to begin with. 

 

I do think the city should use their negotiating power from the position that they have legal authority to remove the payments to get a new concessions on jobs numbers here.   It is an odd balance where without incentives, the merger might cause all or many of those jobs to vanish from Charlotte, but with the incentives, they might tip the scales during merger implementation and yield something like what happened with WF-Wachovia, where enough jobs remain here to be of significant value to the city.  

 

But if it is just throwing money down a wishing well, we might as well cut it off.  

[HopHead]

So it looks like Charlotte may of been closer to landing the Toyota North American HQ than we thought. Apparently we were second to Plano, Texas. All it took was $40M worth of incentives..

 

http://www.bizjournals.com/charlotte/blog/real_estate/2014/05/charlotte-finished-in-second-place-for-massive.html

[kermit]

Ouch!

 

I could have done without knowing that.

 

Something tells me that those 4000 jobs would have been genuinely transformative for both Charlotte and the Upstate / Metrolina region.

[tozmervo]

I wonder if $40m is "cheap" compared to the potential bidding war NC and TX could have gotten into. 

[elrodvt]

If companies are people too i think they can do without the welfare. Eventually this will backfire. You want companies that wish to be here for geographical or workforce reasons.

[Norm2]

If companies are people too i think they can do without the welfare. Eventually this will backfire. You want companies that wish to be here for geographical or workforce reasons.

Exactly, unlike corporations that are looking for free money ::cough:: Chiquita ::cough::

[dubone]

It is insane that we were second place for Toyota, because I can  imagine what if we woke up to news of that HQ coming here, I would have possibly done a real life spit take.  

 

Regardless, it would be nice if core economics brought the companies versus competitions for giant handouts.   Like I said earlier, I still think it is no coincidence they opted to settle in with all the oil company HQs in Dallas/Irving/Plano, but it does mean if we can rank high in this we should hopefully rank high in other cases.

 

Being dead last in education investment will quickly earn this state some serious neverminds from a lot of companies.  I hope the state fixes some of the core economics policies rather than just approving more relocation bribe money. 

[HopHead]

I would be curious to know what Charlotte (and the state since I assume they must have played a role) offered to land Toyota. In the grand scheme of things, $40M is pretty cheap for 4,000 jobs (especially when you compare it to the Chiquita debacle). I would agree that big oil may have played a role, in addition to a better tax situation in Texas (no state income tax there). To dubone's point, I think we need to spend more money in this state for better education and not so much on corporate welfare, because it's a joke. 

Edited May 6, 2014 by wend28

[elrodvt]

Correct me if I am wrong please and I hope I am... But, as a newcomer, I cannot see the state making education improvements until you guys figure a way to boot the Koch boys out of town. How's that going to happen? If I had kids of school age I would not move here unless I could pay for private education. 

[ah59396]

Correct me if I am wrong please and I hope I am... But, as a newcomer, I cannot see the state making education improvements until you guys figure a way to boot the Koch boys out of town. How's that going to happen? If I had kids of school age I would not move here unless I could pay for private education. 

 

 

Well, considering many of us are a product of the NC public education system, it's obviously not all doom and gloom.  The teacher pay in NC is crap, no doubt about it.  I think all of us on here are advocates for improving the system.  But North Carolina is an emerging southern state (some would argue mid-Atlantic).  Politically (and socially) it has come a long way but still has many steps to take.  It doesn't mean the public schools are littered with riff raff and shoddy teachers.  We have many excellent schools all across the state.

[kermit]

 We have many excellent schools all across the state.

 

yes, but based on my experience with my daughter's excellent CMS school they are all going downhill very, very quickly. Her school has seen a significant spike in teacher resignations over the past academic year and it is not a coincidence that it is the best teachers who are leaving.

 

I am also, peripherally, involved in teacher training. The number of students entering education fields is down dramatically and the quality of those students is also down. I am very pessimistic about the future of public education in NC.

[dubone]

I have teacher friends who are extremely successful (great test scores, well-loved, well-respected, etc.) and help low and middle income students show significant improvements on scores, etc.   One has already left town recently to get paid properly somewhere else.  The others are strongly considering it because pay has been frozen for a very very long time.    But consequently, because the low pay means the state and the profession are not getting as many high quality employees, they then double down on red tape to make sure they do their jobs, which then further pushes out high quality employees over time.  

 

It is not all doom and gloom because luckily, it is a profession that is more altruistic in nature, but economics eventually take hold and affect people.   It may have been a nice little trick that NC played during the bad jobs economy because people were not confident to look in other states and make bold life choices.  But as kermit mentions, things are very different this year and people are more able to sell their houses and move to better places.   Attrition from improper compensation ALWAYS draws from the top of your employee pool, not the bottom.   

 

Teaching already is a lesser profession in our culture compared to most peer nations, but NC takes that to a whole new low since the recent rightward swing of the statehouse.

 

It is tempting to blame the Kochs, but this is a core problem with the ideology of the GOP lately.   The Kochs have vastly more significant concerns than teacher pay.  But when generic concepts of smaller government are not rationally applied to effectively governing a society, you get really irrational mismanagement like this.   Where the Kochs and their ilk can be blamed, though, is in funding more right wing candidates to run, which then leads to a statehouse filled with ideologues who take things to an extreme.

 

The reactions are slow, but the results of this high attrition from the top will start to show up, and we will see what they are left with.  Of course by then it will seem too daunting a task to fix and they'll have to take dramatic steps, which seems more and more unlikely, and so fewer highly qualified people will come here to teach out of school, and more will leave.  Even still it would be years to show improvements again even if they fix the core problems.   It could even be a tidal change where businesses and population start leaving in droves, but again as a far lagging indicator, but when that happens, the results will be really unfortunate. 

 

It's going to matter way more in 5-10 years, but it is the dumbest things this state has done in a long time.   

[ssh214]

Another European company acquiring a Charlotte based company...

 

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/08/us-lundbeck-chelsea-merger-idUSBREA470FB20140508

 

Flights to Copenhagen anyone???

Edited May 8, 2014 by saamh

[CLTProductions]

Womp, Eaton cutting 91 jobs

http://www.bizjournals.com/charlotte/blog/outside_the_loop/2014/05/eaton-to-cut-91-charlotte-jobs-as-its-closes-auto.html

[Synopsis101]

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2014/07/28/5071476/matthews-based-family-dollar-bought.html#.U9ZWu-NdUSZ