Governor's Office Approves $8.3 Million Tax Incentive Package

GOED puts bags of taxpayer cash on the table, to lure an international airplane maintenance and repair heavyweight to Ogden

Great economic news for Ogden City this morning, with this front page Standard-Examiner article, reporting that the Governor's Office of Economic Development (GOED) has followed through on the story reported last May, and approved a multi-million dollar incentive package to lure an international airplane maintenance and repair heavyweight to Ogden's Hinkley Airport. We incorporate Jeff Demoss's lead paragraphs below:

OGDEN — The state has approved a package of incentives totaling more than $8.3 million to secure Ogden-Hinckley Airport as the expansion site for an international airplane maintenance and repair company.
The Business Development Board in the Governor’s Office of Economic Development approved the incentives for the Swiss company Jet Aviation at a Friday meeting.
The incentives would be awarded on a post-performance basis, meaning the company would have to meet specific benchmarks in terms of jobs and other economic contributions to get the money.

According to this morning's story, Jet Aviation will occupy the 91,000-square-foot facility at the Gateway Center, which was vacated by Adam Aircraft last winter, when that fly by night company went unceremoniously belly-up. Unlike the now defunct Adam Aircraft however, Jet Aviation appears to be robust and viable; and can be reasonably expected, we think, to deliver these significant benefits to our local economy, as projected by the gnomes at the GOED:

• 650 new locally-recruited jobs;
• Wage scale 50 percent above the Weber County average;
• $6.9 million of its own investment in the expansion of business operations;
• $420 million in new state wages;
• $28 million in new state tax revenue.

As our gentle readers have to be painfully aware, Weber County Forum isn't overly fond of of the whole concept of awarding taxpayer handouts to private entities. Unfortunately, corporate welfare is integral to the the economic development game as it's currently played in America; so we'll just bite our tongues, reluctantly go with the flow, and close with this observation:

If the taxpayers of Utah are hell-bent to court businesses with bags full of taxpayer cash, it's industry powerhouses like Jet Aviation that we should be courting.

All-in-all, Jet Aviation will be great for the local economy, we believe.

And what say our gentle readers about all this?