Tagged: Government Transparency

Three Idaho school districts and a county have been honored for their websites. The non-profit government transparency organization Sunshine Review gave its annual Sunny Awards to the 247 government websites it deemed most transparent.  

The Boise, Blaine County and Caldwell School Districts made the list. Canyon was the only Idaho county to show up.

In an effort to become more transparent, the state of Idaho has launched a new website that details state spending and revenue. Transparent.Idaho.gov was created by the state controller’s office, after the state continually received failing grades on its openness.

Last year during ‘sunshine week,’ StateImpact Idaho reported on two separate transparency report cards — one gave Idaho an "F", the other a “D-".

Every state, including Idaho, offers tax breaks, grants or subsidies to businesses in hopes of spurring economic development.

But the states vary widely in terms of what they do when a company doesn’t create as many jobs as it agreed to, or otherwise follow through with its end of the incentive bargain.

Last month, Transform Solar announced that it was closing and laying off about 250 people at its facility in Nampa. As StateImpact reported, the manufacturer of high-tech solar cells, had received $1.68 million in workforce training grants from the state of Idaho — money that the company will not have to pay back.

Earlier this week, Micron-owned Transform Solar, a maker of high-tech solar cells, announced it’s closing and laying-off at least 250 people over the next three months.

A recent report from Pew Center on the States lists Idaho among 26 states ‘trailing behind’ when it comes to evaluating tax incentives.  That is, having a mechanism in place to take a closer look at the state-specific incentives and exemptions on a regular basis, and to evaluate if they’re doing what they were intended to do.  In most cases, that’s spurring economic growth and

StateImpact Idaho has rolled out a series of stories this week on tax incentive transparency in Idaho.  That is, what is and isn’t public information when it comes to business tax credits and exemptions. 

Almost always, tax incentives are created in the name of economic development.  But in Idaho, little information is available about whether these incentives create jobs and grow companies. 

Scott Graf talks with StateImpact reporter Emilie Ritter Saunders about the lack of transparency surrounding Idaho's business tax incentives. 

Good Jobs First is a non-partisan, non-profit government transparency advocacy group based in Washington, D.C.  It was founded in 1998 by Greg LeRoy, who is now executive director. LeRoy has been studying tax incentive transparency for more than two decades.  We recently spoke with him to learn more about what he considers ‘transparent enough,’ and what states are doing to open incentive information to the public. 

Q: What is transparent enough? What should people have the right to see?

A new 55-page report from The Pew Center on the States shows most states don’t really know if business tax incentives are boosting job growth.