Detroit News Exposes MEDC Secrecy

The Detroit News reports on the lack of transparency from Michigan’s corporate welfare program.

“Michigan taxpayers are on the hook for giving 96 percent of nearly $9.4 billion in tax credits to companies in the vaguely named ‘transportation’ sector, but a state agency that doles out the job-retaining incentives refuses to disclose the revised amounts owed to individual companies,” the article notes.

Reporter Chad Livengood notes that deals in the past were more open to the public than today and quotes the Mackinac Center's James Hohman:

"It's a huge expenditure of taxpayer dollars of which no one is allowed any details," said James Hohman, assistant director of fiscal policy at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a [free market] think tank in Midland. "A company's estimated tax credit amount has always been disclosable."

The Mackinac Center has documented the lack of openness from the MEDC about how they spend taxpayer money with nearly 200 articles, including in a 2009 policy brief “MEGA, the MEDC and the Loss of Sunshine.”

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