Well said on the Domfar incentives

The Jacksonville Daily News celebrates a legislative vote last week against corporate welfare:

On Thursday night, while most of the state was not paying attention, the N.C. House voted down a bill that would have provided up to $9 million in corporate welfare to a company that bought a Washington County paper mill over the next five years.

The company, Montreal-based Domfar Corp., doesn’t plan to produce paper at the plant. Instead, it plans to use it for producing fluff pulp, which is used to make diapers.

The bill had passed earlier in the Senate. All that was left was for the House to give its blessing before being sent to Gov. Bev Perdue for her signature.

When the bill came up for a final reading, it was defeated by two votes. A later effort to revive it also failed. Efforts continued in the Senate on Friday as that chamber voted out another version of the Domfar incentives bill.

Sweetheart incentives and corporate welfare bills are bad for a number of reasons. The primary reason is that in such cases, the government ends up picking winners and losers. Such businesses, such as Dell Computers, Apple Computers, Goodyear Tire and Rubber and Federal Express, to name a few, get their tax bills lowered or get special government grants to build in North Carolina, expand here or stay here.

Meanwhile the losers, which are every other business, continue paying their share of taxes in the state and get no sweetheart deals.

Unfortunately, lawmakers soon revived the bill granting Domfar incentives, as Becki Gray explains here. The House will have one more chance today to say yes or no.