Jon Sanders

How much coal ash is contained at each of the six facilities involved in the coal-ash cleanup settlement agreement between Gov. Roy Cooper’s Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), several “Community Groups,” Duke Energy, and not electricity consumers? How much coal ash does this agreement obligate Duke to remove? Also, how much does this agreement allow to remain?

Despite whatever they might say, the signatory "Community Groups" deliberately chose to have you, your neighbors, the poor, the elderly, people living check to check, etc. pay for the additional coal-ash cleanup, not Duke. 

Of the four possible combinations, we at the John Locke Foundation have always favored the Freedom & Growth combination of low corporate taxation with low corporate welfare. Gov. Roy Cooper's choice is the cardinal opposite.

The audit's accounting for the lost government use of the tax credits doesn't ask what economic activities would have occurred if the money was directed by individual taxpayers to whom it originally belonged. It assumes that their money is directed by government at no cost to the state economy.

The audit provides a much lower economic impact of Georgia's film tax credit than the Georgia Film, Music and Digital Entertainment Office does. But because of certain assumptions used in its model, the audit still manages to overestimate Georgia's film incentives' impact.

Public-choice problems are very difficult problems to overcome, even when there is broad agreement across political parties and society that they need to be fixed

In 2016 Georgia granted $667 million in tax credits for film productions. In return, Georgia realized only $65 million in net new revenue, meaning the state self-inflicted a net revenue loss of $602 million.

Performance audits of the administration and economic impact of Georgia's Film Tax Credit ought to put the kibosh on any Tar Heel envy of it. To call it disastrous is insufficient.