AUSTIN – Over the last seven years, a controversial state program has been using your tax dollars to help lure big corporations to Texas. Now state lawmakers are now studying whether you're getting your money's worth.
Since Governor Rick Perry asked the Legislature to create the Texas Enterprise Fund in 2003, supporters credit it for the creation of 52,000 such jobs across the state.
“We really need to double the fund. Even in this very difficult economic time -- because for me this is not an expenditure, this is an investment,” said State. Rep. Angie Chen Button, R-Richardson.
She told fellow members of the House Economic Development Committee she estimates the state has spent $7,500 per job created by the fund. She also estimates that for every one dollar the state has put in, it's collected $35 in return.
Other states are seeking to sweeten deals, too.
“It’s very pro-business, but it’s very anti-market, and I would be totally against it if we weren’t in an arms race with all these other states who are going to do it if we don’t,” said State Rep. Mark Strama, D-Austin.
The Texas Enterprise Fund has also been used to lure 700 jobs to Central Texas, including those at Hanger Orthopedics and Legal Zoom who plan to set up shop soon in Austin.
“Perry’s message in a nutshell is the Texas economy is better than the economy in the rest of the nation because of my leadership,” said William Lutz, managing editor of the conservative leaning Lone Star Report. “Every time he shows up at the opening of a new corporate plant, he reinforces that message.”
Perry got to do a lot of that. In the final weeks of the primary campaign, he announced more than a thousand jobs likely to come to Texas because of the fund.
