Cook: Join the IDB, Helen

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photo David Cook

Few individuals have done so much in so little time as Helen Burns Sharp.

In a matter of months, she's brought the complex and watch-paint-dry-dull issue of public tax incentives into the front-page limelight. She's made TIF a household word, gone toe-to-toe against mountaintop developers, politicians and big-city attorneys while filing not one but two lawsuits in the name of openness and democracy.

She's demure yet gutsy, a very polite thorn in the side of our Industrial Development Board: the seven-member body that approves (some would say irresponsibly) the tax breaks given by our governments to businesses.

"What I'm trying to do is make sure the public has a seat at the table," she said.

Here's one way to do it:

Join the IDB, Helen.

In a noteworthy move that would not have happened without Sharp's activism, the Chattanooga City Council just amended the IDB process: Members are no longer appointed by the Chamber of Commerce or the mayor, but rather selected -- fully, from application to nomination to vote -- by the council.

And four spots are opening up.

So please, Helen, submit your application.

It would be the most meaningful move in recent political history; the reformer, now reforming from within. You've got thousands of people in your corner. (Council, don't forget that.)

Then, do what you do best: Ask powerful questions about the ways we incentivize businesses here.

"When you ask the right questions, you get good answers," she said.

Let's start with this one: Are our tax incentives working?

Since 2011, tax incentives known as PILOTs (payments in lieu of taxes) have allowed businesses to create more than 10,000 jobs and invest more than $1 billion in Hamilton County, says Mayor Jim Coppinger.

And since 2008, the IDB has approved more than $285 million in tax incentives.

Close one eye, and all of this looks wonderful, an enticing this-equals-that story: Tax incentives lead to more jobs and capital investment, all part of the Chattanooga-VW-renaissance tale we tell ourselves.

Yet, with both eyes open, the picture isn't so rosy.

Our poverty rate is roughly double the national average. Forty percent of our children live in poverty. Chattanooga is the eighth most unhealthy city in the U.S.

Black households earn half as much as white households in Hamilton County. In some places, 40 percent of residents have no high school diploma.

We're a wounded city ... when we shouldn't be.

How can we be this wounded if all these tax incentives are supposed to work? Why haven't these 10,000 jobs and $1 billion of capital investment translated into better livelihoods and a rising tide of health, wealth and prosperity?

Is it because they have, and we just need more of them?

Or is it because they don't work as well as we think?

The long-held belief is that businesses will go elsewhere without heavy tax breaks, so in a race-to-the-near-bottom, governments and chambers show more and more skin in order to seal the deal. It's the economic version of that insecure feeling in middle school: Everybody's better than I am, so I've got to do more to make myself likeable.

Yet if we're on every Best City to Live list in the U.S., why do we feel such a compelling need to play the tax-incentives game? Burns has research showing that many companies have already decided where they're going to invest before even knocking on a chamber's door.

"A lot of people truly believe if we don't do this dance we won't get the business we want," Sharp said.

The dance is not necessarily a bad one: Tax breaks can be and are used as a responsible tool in business recruitment.

But we also need people willing to challenge the bandleader, folks interested in asking questions instead of just whistling.

Helen, please submit your application.

Contact David Cook at dcook@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6329. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter at DavidCookTFP.

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