What about it?
What about the cost of BRAC?
Should the federal government help defray the costs it is creating and imposing on our county? Perhaps, though to be fair we are expected to see a non-trivial increase in tax revenue.
What do you think?
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
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6 comments:
No way should the feds pay anything - they are already giving Maryland thousands of jobs. BRAC is a gift which will provide significant tax revenue.
Making the government pay for creating jobs is the type of anti-business attitude that has tarred Maryland's reputation.
If Maryland / Howard County does not want the BRAC jobs, there are 49 other states that would be glad to take them.
Maryland owes a thank you to Gov. Ehrlich and Aris Melissaratos, who lobbied behind-the-scenes to win jobs away from (then-Democrat controlled) NJ and VA. Unfortunately, the jobs will arrive too late to give Ehrlich the credit he deserves.
as i understand it, BRAC is not a private business, so how would asking the federal government to pay for some of the costs associated with BRAC be "anti-business"?
It is anti-business b/c it shows a fundamental misunderstanding of some basic business principles, such as:
1) More jobs in an area is a good thing (raises tax revenue and overall salaries, attracts new workers which raise property values, etc.)
Asking the feds to pay an impact fee would send a message to other entities seeking to create jobs (private and public) that Howard County does not want them.
That'd be a big mistake.
Unemployment is already pretty low in Howard County. Maybe the Government should have given those jobs to someplace where an economic boost is desperately needed.
To anon 12:17 - Good point, though different issue to whether the Feds should pay the BRAC communities.
Problem is BRAC looks at existing operations, few of which are in such areas.
Why Baltimore doesn't lobby harder for military facilities is beyond me. With the MARC train, it'd be a good fit.
BRAC doesn't just affect us, it affects lots of regions around the country as the government closes and realigns bases (hey, I bet that has something to do with the name!). I would think that if the federal government was going to help anyone, they would be helping the communities that are losing jobs, not those that are gaining, and rightly so.
And, as someone pointed out at a BRAC session recently, Howard has about the best possible combination: it is gaining jobs from nearby installations, but it doesn't have a major government base taking up a lot of valuable space but not paying taxes to the county.
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