To hear them tell it, state legislators yield to no one in their dislike of the tax breaks and assorted goodies they reluctantly - so they say - hand out to job-promising corporations.
Only, give legislators a chance to take a stand and they head for the exits. Witness the economic incentives larded on in the General Assembly's final jam-packed hours, late last week, to companies that may include - citizens can't be trusted with the actual names - Microsoft and Fidelity.
No surprise there. But how about the last-minute bending-over-backwards act legislators performed to make sure potential polluters won't face tough environmental scrutiny just because they've been promised state incentives. There, big majorities in both houses demeaned themselves in a whole new way.
North Carolinians who've been following the saga of Titan Cement and its plans for a big new cement plant at Castle Hayne, near Wilmington, know there's some recent history involved here. This spring, Wake Superior Court Judge Donald W. Stephens sided with environmental groups and declared that the public money pledged to Titan for its controversial project - which involves burning coal and "mining" wetlands in an environmentally sensitive setting - should trigger what's called a comprehensive environmental review.
Can't have that, legislators decided. As Elizabeth City Democrat Bill Owens put it, "If we don't approve this, a company will just go to Virginia or Georgia or some other state."
In Titan's case, that might be a welcome outcome, at least for the many Wilmington-area residents who've rallied against the plant since this deal was hatched - complete with incentives - during Gov. Mike Easley's administration. A larger point, however, is that the ruling applied only to those incentive-seeking companies with a strong potential for pollution. According to Todd Miller of the N.C. Coastal Federation, "Approximately six out of the more than 100 economic developments recruited to southeastern North Carolina might have required more environmental review."
As matters stand after legislators voted and ran last week, Titan is still subject to the court decision, but companies receiving incentives after the first of last month will not face "nose-to-tail" reviews.
Too bad. If, like Titan, their plans cry out for considering the total effect of added air and water pollution on people and the ecosystem, the real barrier to North Carolina's progress is that state aid was ever set in concrete in the first place.
