Commissioners take risk with other people's jobs
County commissioners invariably say they want to create jobs and economic development when they’re running for office. It sounds good as part of their campaign shtick, and supporting local business certainly is a laudable goal.
But saying you want jobs and business growth and actually doing something to make that happen apparently are two very different things for our own Flathead County commissioners. We’re still scratching our heads over last week’s decision to grudgingly grant one local manufacturing company a tax break for expanding and adding jobs and flatly refusing another similar request because the company missed a deadline.
Total Label USA will get its tax break on $258,684 in new construction that enabled the company to add eight new jobs. The tax incentive amounts to about $800 a year for the first five years and then tapers off over the next five years.
Commissioner Gary Krueger said he has a problem giving companies tax breaks because that money then has to be picked up by the rest of the county’s taxpayers. Commissioner Phil Mitchell echoed that viewpoint. We don’t immediately know how many thousands of taxpayers there are in Flathead County, but it doesn’t seem like a big imposition to any of us taxpayers to spread out this $800 if it means a local manufacturing company can stay competitive and grow.
Total Label has been granted tax incentives for expansion in past years, but companies who seek the incentive are few and far between.
Flathead County offers the tax breaks pursuant to a state law on new or expanding industry assessments. In the first five years after a construction permit is issued, qualifying improvements or modernized processes that represent new industry or expansion of an existing industry are taxed at 50 percent of their taxable value. Each year thereafter, the percentage must be increased by equal percentages until the full taxable value is attained in the 10th year. In subsequent years, the property must be taxed at 100 percent of its taxable value.
Nomad Global Communications — a local manufacturing success story often touted by economic development groups — and its business partner KK&B Communications were quickly shut down for a tax incentive because they missed a March 1 deadline. Those companies were asking for a somewhat bigger tax break because Nomad spent nearly $1 million to add an 11,000-square-foot building to its Columbia Falls facility and created 35 new jobs.
Commissioner Pam Holmquist said rules are rules, and if they bend them for one they’d have to bend them for others. So, no to Nomad and KK&B, even though Nomad is planning to further expand and plans to grow its workforce by 50 to 60 percent in the near future.
There was no graciousness from any of our commissioners. No words of thanks to these companies creating jobs, no support or encouragement.
A Nomad representative said the application process for the tax incentive is confusing and complicated — that was part of the reason for missing the deadline. But none of the commissioners bothered to even ask, “How can we make the process better?”
It needs to be said that Nomad already has been courted by other states who would love to have such an up-and-coming manufacturer in their neck of the woods.
We understand that rules are rules, but it’s this kind of shoddy treatment that could make the difference whether a company stays or goes from the Flathead. We should be bending backward for our local businesses that create our tax base and give our citizens good-paying jobs.
A longtime Whitefish businessman who attended last week’s hearings on the tax incentives seemed baffled as well by the commissioners’ collective attitude.
“It would seem we need to do whatever we can to grow the business community,” he told the commissioners.
Amen.