Corporate Welfare for Beech-Nut Not a Good Idea

One urban legend, which I have heard repeatedly, claims that there are signs on the subway walls in New York City directing people to Montgomery County where they can receive generous welfare benefits. However, I have come to believe that where these signs really exist is on Wall Street, where corporations are directed to Montgomery County, knowing that our various IDAs and EDCs hand out tax dollars indiscriminately and with little oversight to any business that promises to create at least one new job.

Today's welfare queens are not women collecting undeserved benefits and driving Cadillacs. Rather they are corporate heads collecting undeserved benefits and driving Cadillacs.

At least when a welfare queen gets arrested for fraud, I can take some comfort in the fact that my tax dollars went to an American. But when New York State and Montgomery County collude to give millions of tax dollars to Beech-Nut Corporation so it can build a new facility and move twenty miles from Canajoharie to the Town of Florida, I don't have that same comfort because Beech-Nut is not an American owned company.

I don't know about you, but I have problems with corporate welfare under any circumstances, but I have greater difficulties giving tax money to corporations that aren't even American owned. I would also find it less of a problem giving tax money to a company that was in financial trouble, but that's not the case with the Hero Group, the Swiss corporation that owns Beech-Nut. The Hero Group generated revenues in excess of 1.7 billion Swiss Francs (more than 1.5 billion dollars) in 2006 and had approximately 4,000 employees in more than 30 countries.

So what are we going to have to pay Dieter and Heidi before this is all over with?

$42 million in Empire Zone benefits.

$38.5 million in tax incentives from Montgomery County Industrial Development Agency.

$18 million in funds for construction, machinery and equipment from the Empire State Development Corporation.

$3 million from a State Assembly appropriation grant.

$2 million grant from the New York State Energy and Research Development Authority.