EPA creates regs for clean air and water, etc, for companies to follow. OSHA creates regs for workers’ safety. Companies choose whether to adhere to those or not; they weigh the cost of necessary investments vs fines for non-compliance and make their decisions. Cost of doing business. Profit and loss. Doesn’t the state delegate the task of checking on job numbers to County EDO’s?
Hello Phil. You're right about how companies behave, and that's actually the piece's own premise. Companies weigh costs and respond to the incentives in front of them, and nobody should expect a company to volunteer rigor the contract doesn't require. My argument isn't with the companies. It's with the contract.
But notice where the EPA and OSHA comparison breaks. That cost-of-compliance calculation you describe only exists because those regimes have inspectors and real fines. Somebody can show up and read the smokestack. On the grant side of this program, the auditors found the inspection step is the company's own paperwork. Page 41 of the 2020 audit: the only evidence used to verify job creation is documentation provided by the company itself. And the repayment formula on the back end comes with a clause letting the Council reduce or waive what's owed, in its sole discretion, pages 46 and 47. A compliance calculation with no detection and a waivable fine isn't the EPA model. It's closer to an honor box.
On the counties: they're in these deals, but as grantees, not inspectors. The grant contracts run through the county, and the county signs off when a company falls short and pleads circumstances. But when the auditors recommended additional verification of claimed jobs, the agency's written answer wasn't "the county development offices already handle that." It was that verifying would be "not practical to implement." That answer is in the 2024 follow-up review, page 2. If the checking had been delegated to somebody, that was the moment to say so.
The part that stays with me is that the real check costs almost nothing. Every employer already files quarterly wage reports with the state. Matching claims against them is one file. The state stopped doing it in the mid-1990s.
EPA creates regs for clean air and water, etc, for companies to follow. OSHA creates regs for workers’ safety. Companies choose whether to adhere to those or not; they weigh the cost of necessary investments vs fines for non-compliance and make their decisions. Cost of doing business. Profit and loss. Doesn’t the state delegate the task of checking on job numbers to County EDO’s?
Hello Phil. You're right about how companies behave, and that's actually the piece's own premise. Companies weigh costs and respond to the incentives in front of them, and nobody should expect a company to volunteer rigor the contract doesn't require. My argument isn't with the companies. It's with the contract.
But notice where the EPA and OSHA comparison breaks. That cost-of-compliance calculation you describe only exists because those regimes have inspectors and real fines. Somebody can show up and read the smokestack. On the grant side of this program, the auditors found the inspection step is the company's own paperwork. Page 41 of the 2020 audit: the only evidence used to verify job creation is documentation provided by the company itself. And the repayment formula on the back end comes with a clause letting the Council reduce or waive what's owed, in its sole discretion, pages 46 and 47. A compliance calculation with no detection and a waivable fine isn't the EPA model. It's closer to an honor box.
On the counties: they're in these deals, but as grantees, not inspectors. The grant contracts run through the county, and the county signs off when a company falls short and pleads circumstances. But when the auditors recommended additional verification of claimed jobs, the agency's written answer wasn't "the county development offices already handle that." It was that verifying would be "not practical to implement." That answer is in the 2024 follow-up review, page 2. If the checking had been delegated to somebody, that was the moment to say so.
The part that stays with me is that the real check costs almost nothing. Every employer already files quarterly wage reports with the state. Matching claims against them is one file. The state stopped doing it in the mid-1990s.
Thanks for the clarification, Mike! I agree with creating greater accountability (again) with the state’s auditing process! Keep on, sir!