From Harford County government:
Harford County Executive David R. Craig has issued a brief statement concerning a news report of the planned addition of more than 100 employees to the British tech firm Smiths Detection, whose U.S. headquarters is located in Edgewood.
“I am pleased to hear the great news that Smiths Detection, a division of a London-based multinational engineering firm, will be consolidating its headquarters and security manufacturing operations in Harford County. This is great news for Harford County and the State of Maryland.
The Smiths Detection addition to Harford County reflects our business friendly environment and our effort to provide economic opportunities as well as to grow and sustain Harford’s prosperity. Business ventures in Harford County work!
The expansion of Smiths Detection’s workforce in the county is yet another example of the outstanding work of the Harford County Office of Economic Development. The Office of Economic Development works tirelessly to help attract new businesses to Harford County, as well as assist existing businesses that wish to expand.”
Smith’s Detection moved here because it made good business sense to be close to their customer – APG and the Federal Government. Since then , and before they got $100k handout paid for by Harford County tax payers , Smith’s Detection announced that they had secured a $16.9 million contract with APG. Now the County Executive would like you to believe that this company would not have expanded and added new jobs without the county giving them a grant. Ludicrous !
Jim Richardson ( the head of the Department of Economic Development) was asked by Joe Woods if Smith’s Detection – with all of it’s ties to APG- would pack up and move if they didn’t get a taxpayer funded handout. Richardson said that it would be unlikely.
Only a politician would spin a waste of taxpayer money as being business friendly and then attempt to give himself and his administration credit for creating jobs.
This story should have ended with ” I’m David Craig and I approve this message”
They’re stepped in it on this one and they know it – but the county executive doubles down. It’s really his only option since this is already out in the open and widely denounced. I’m hoping the Smith’s folks appreciate the million bucks we just paid; hoping their executives can take that hard earned money and buy themselves that yacht or mercedes they’ve always wanted; you know those illusive luxuries that most of us can’t afford, but in this case are paying for.
In your dreams.
When Mr. Craig loses his bid to become Maryland’s next governor he can always count on Smiths Detection for a nice high paying job. What goes around comes around.
I’m so glad to hear that the office of economic development works tirelessly, considering that one department costs Harford County $2.4 million a year, $1.5 million of which is salaries and benefits.
Mr.Craig,
When I pay my federal income taxes, a portion goes to Smith Detection Co. a company that claims a profit $691 million dollars in 2011,
and when I pay my MD income and levied sales taxes, a portion goes to Smith Detection Co. to move to Harford county for moving expenses, when the Smith Detection co. claimed a pre- tax profit of $625 million, in 2011,
,and when I pay my Harford county prop. taxes, that a portion of my Harford county property taxes will will be supporting the Smith Detection Co.
.to train their employees that are moving from Canada to Harford county and who will earn a base salary of $72,000 yearly,
I do not share your enthusiasm or applause for this deal.
Dear Mrs. McGrady,
When I pay taxes at all levels a portion of it goes to support organizations such as NPR and Planned Parenthood and Solyndra and they don’t contribute a dime in taxes of any kind to even help offset what they receive. I have learned to live with it (at least while we have a Democratic Administration in Maryland and Washington) and so you must learn to live with the measly little Smith’s deal which at least gets us a quite nice financial return and early payback.
AlexR
Sir, Ma’am
I respect your opinion, however, I believe that you, the County Auditor and the County Executive are wrong on this one. The payback that is claimed comes ostensibly from the taxes paid by people who will be moving into Harford County to fill the 100 projected jobs. This is not a profit or free money for the County. Those people pay those taxes for the services that the County provides. In fact, just for education, Harrford County allocates approximately $6,000 per child. Projecting out that each new job brings one only new child to Harford County, then each the total cost to Harford County is $600,000 per year. It does not appear that the projected taxes will cover this expenditure.
John,
The $6,000 is the income tax portion the county receives. If we are paying for their children then we are also recieving the property taxes on their home, and someone who is making this kind of money probably has a pretty sizeable house that will be bringing in quite a bit more money.
Alex R,
Of course you are correct that sometimes some projects that some portions of taxes paid support causes that we don’t agree with or support. Hopefully elections influence and address those issues.
You miss my point, Smith Detection Co. earns a handsome profit, and we are gifting them more money to come here to Harford county when they were going to come here anyway, to grow their co. and be closer to its biggest client.
Mr. Craig,
I congratulate you on 2 things. First, getting this deal done in a form that gets us an early payback of the HarCo investment of a measly $100K. After that the rest will be a ‘profit’ to us. Second, I congratulate you on getting O’Malley to put up $750K – I think I have that number right – for a deal that helps mainly HarCo, a county he despises because we don’t vote for him. Well done.
By the way, is O’Malley still running around the country campaigning for Obama while he is drawing his pay from Maryland? I wish I could get my employer to continue to pay me while I run around for weeks on end working or someone else.
Alex , you said ” I congratulate you on getting O’Malley to put up $750K “. O’Mally did not reach in his pocket and pull out $750k and give it to Harford County. This money came from Maryland tax payers. The more accurate assessment of this deal would be that O’Craig aided O’Malley in spending Maryland and Harford County Tax payers money. It was made very clear at the county council meeting that the state would only kick in the $750K handout if the county agreed to give the extra $100k. This amounts to nothing less than O’Craig and O’Malley working together and supporting crony capitalism together. A TRUE conservative would have jumped at the chance to “block” the state from giving away tax payer money to big business.
Bob,
The state money is money already taken out of the economy. If you are thinking that since Harford County didn’t want the money, the O’Malley Administration would just give it back to the taxpayers you are really needing to re-assess the way Maryland’s Government works. I would also point you to another “true conservative” Ron Paul who never turned away a dime in federal pork barrel spending for his district and actually sponsored bills for every constituent request to get our federal tax dollars pumped into his district.
It’s not being given to the district and can in no way be described as pork barrel spending because we the taxpayers got no road, no bridge, no community center – I’d guess Smith executives will recieve a bigger bonus perhaps or buy that yacht or mercedes. You’re suggestion smacks of justification for cronyism and corruption at it’s worst. Just because other people blatantly waste taxpayer money doesn’t mean we should behave the same way.
A TRUE conservative organization would be collecting signatures on recall petitions for O’Malley and Craig.
Factcheck
Sir, Ma’am
You have a point regarding incomed taxes. The County Auditor only considered Income Tax Revenue when formulating the fical note for this effort. Projecting Real Property Tax revenue, and projecting that the person in the salary range in question purchases a $400,000 house which seems to be the current market price, and assuming that the person does not purchase a house in Beechtree Estates, where a least 40 percent of the Real Property Tax paid goes toward principal and interest on the $14 million bond the county provided, and using the current real property tax rate of $.896 per hundred dollars of assessed value, generates $3,584 in Real Property Tax revenue. Using the County Auditor’s figures for Income Tax revenue, it appears that persons in this salary range would generate $1,700 dollars in Income Tax revenue. Combined total $5,284. Seems a bit short, just considering education expenditures, without considering any of the othere per person costs of the County
So John, since it is a financial downfall for current taxpayers if any new residents move to Harford County, should we close off the county to new development and sales of existing homes to anybody, or should we re-adjust our tax structure to follow? You are raising a point larger than the $100,000 loan/grant/giveaway if we as a county aren’t properly assessed to be sustainable in the long term.
Your argument first has to assume these jobs would not have been added without the bribe which we know isn’t true as already established by Joe Woods very simple question and Smith’s response. Any words thereafter are designed as cover. If they were moving these jobs already just why did the taxpayers need to give them nearly a million dollars? And please don’t tell me it’s money we pay because the gov’t is slow…it’ll sound just as dumb as it did when Craig tried to make that claim.
Factcheck
Sir/ma’am
You introduce an interesting gambit, perhaps for another agenda.
First, the point is there is no free money, there is no payback of the $100,000 dollars. UNLESS, Smiths detection pays full state income taxes, full real property taxes and full personal property taxes. In that case, even though Smiths as a corporate entity is treated as an individual, they do not send any children to school or the parks or use roads. Only in that event does the County get free money. Unfortunately, Smiths will not pay the full amount on income taxes or real property taxes. Remains to be seen whether they will pay full personal property taxes.
Second, shut down all new development and prevent people from moving in. The procedures are in place for that option under the Adequate Public Facilites Act. They have been selectively empoyed in various parts of the County in the past. They may be employed again. Basically, when the capacity of public facilities is exceeded, all development in that area stops. As a point of reference, all development in Howard county, I believe, was stopped for a period of time because there was an inadequate water supply. This is really a quality of life issue, and who we select to determine what that quality will be
Third raise taxes. I see that as an eveuntuality UNLESS county government gets a better grasp on the situations and circumstances we are facing. Just a few examples, the County Executive has proposed rebuilding 4 schools. Estimated cost, based on previous school construction, in excess of $200 million dollars. The County Executive would also like to construct a cultural Arts Center estimated cost $60 to $80 million, not including operating costs. Estimated principal and interest cost for these projects $15 million dollars a year for at least 30 years. Where will that come from?
Not trying to trick on this one although I do believe the line that this giveaway will pay for itself. But on a larger issue, it would make sense for goverment to be set on a sustainable long term path. We earmark a portion of each tax to a specific goal. 75% of all personal property taxes will go to the schools, 20% of personal property taxes to transportation, 5% to parks, 75% of income taxes to police, and so on. If the property taxes go down because the value of homes drops, then those departments need to cut that same amount by default, and it would be up to the elected officials to secure additional funding by new taxes, but not shifting the burden to another department, or taking from another dedicated revenue stream.
And then we would have an impact fee on new construction that would be equivalent to the cost needed for that new house. How much does it cost for 1.33 seats in a school building, .02 police cars, .3 roads to that development to be built, etc… Nothing is free in this world, and we need to pay for them, but the cost should be shifted to each cause for the growth and then distributed accordingly.
It’s just something that is intriguing on a certain level to figure out.
How about a nice and simple “it’s wrong to take money from someone and give it to big business “?
I won’t be pulled into the weeds by the obvious red herring here. It’s a waste of time to talk about how much tax revenue will be generated by this group based up Harford County tax payers “investment” of 100K. Fact is these people would have moved here regardless, this was already planned because Smiths needs proximity to APG. Based upon that elephant in the room paying them a dollar would have been gratuitous and unnecessary, but 100K is insulting and a preposterous abuse of the taxpayer.
While providing answers to the County Council on the grant to Smiths Detection, the Director of the Office of Economic Development stated that Harford County was dragged into the act by the State.
When answering Jaon Ryder’s request for answeres on the Office of Economic Development the County Executive stated that the County Council was repsonsible for improving economic conditions in the County.
Mr. Chris Street, spokesman for the Economic Development Advisory Board, stated that the Board was responsible for developing incentive programs and that representatives from the corporate community decided who got what, not the government representative.
Now the County Executive is stating that business moves to Harford County as a direct result of the tireless efforts of the Office of Economic Development.
There seems to be two questions
Who is in charge of this whole effort?
Who knows where the money goes?.
I don’t know this person who, there is no entry for that person in the County phone directory, but he/she must be the single most important person in the County. Or this is all just a retake of the comedy skit Whos on first.
Bob,
You said “It’s wrong to take money from someone and give it to big business.” When did that start?
Are just being sarcastic or are you describing a fairy tale world that you see in your dreams? I could fill up pages and pages of examples of taking money from someone and giving it to big business. Both political parties. All of the time.
I agree both parties do it “all of the time” The difference is , what you see as a fairy tail , I see as something to strive for.
Absolutely agree with something to strive for and let’s leave it at that.
I want to know where the money goes. Who knows? The entire Office of Economic Development appears to be a front for something else. Still waiting on my answers from the County under the Freedom of Information Act.
How many proponents of suspicious spending disguised as economic development want to pay more in taxes than they should? I for one say the Smith Detection show has crossed the line between a worthy cause and outright misappropriation of taxpayer money. Wish it was a bad dream but the collective efforts of the three stooges made it happen. If you watch the public hearing conducted by the Harford County Council you will see just how far they are in the dark about what they were approving. How can anyone be in charge of a program that is just running wild? Irresponsible fiscal actions by out of control organizations are not the way government is to function. A democracy we are. Limited government is the thread that unites us. Higher taxes because of entitlements to unacceptable causes is not a characteristic of a democracy and it certainly is not a feature of limited government.
Taxes everywhere are going up at a time when taxes should be going down. Government is so twisted that it is spinning out of control. Imagine loans are provided to be forgiven and not repaid. That is not capitalism. The federal government has one stimulus after another in attempt to increase consumer spending. It has not worked. What the federal government gives the state and county government takes. The consumer is simply caught in the middle of bad tax policy all around.
The Harford County Office of Economic Development works tirelessly in self promotion. If a child put up a lemonade stand on the front lawm at home the HCOED would immediately take credit for it. Business is certainly capable of organizing any expansion without the HCOED hanging on its coattails in order to justify its existence. If the whole department vanished for just a year, the effect on the economy of Harford County would be insignificant. Business would do what business does. It would conduct business and not attempt to seek government hand outs.
Will Harford County lower taxes or continue to extend grants to unworthy causes? Will Harford County if the proof is in the pudding about economic development, that the program is a success,pass the fruits of that success to the taxpayers? They so far have not. It certainly does not appear that the actions of the HCOEC have met its self promotion achievements.
Obviously, the proponents of higher taxes and wasteful spending will view the work of the HCOED very favorably. I do believe that the HCOED has a purpose and a very important role in serving the citizens of Harford County. I hope they working with the Economic Development Advisory Board and the local citizens reexamine what their priorities should be.
It should be noted that although I agree the entire council looked like baffoons when they approved this Joe Woods asked the one important question and based upon the answer he got from Smith officials was the singular county official who voted no.