The group that has unsuccessfully challenged economic incentives given to corporations by the state of North Carolina in the past filed another suit Thursday.
This time, the North Carolina Institute for Constitutional Law (NCICL) is seeking to block legislation that granted tax breaks to Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. and Bridgestone-Firestone. The General Assembly and Gov. Mike Easley struck an agreement on a bill in a special legislative session designed to keep the companies in North Carolina.
The NCICL, which was founded and led until recently by former state Supreme Court chief justice and current Republican gubernatorial candidate Robert Orr, called the tire company-directed legislation a “$60 million giveaway.”
“The state constitution requires that any expenditure of state funds be for a public purpose. In the past, government and big corporations have said that massive corporate welfare was necessary to create jobs, and they claimed that was a public purpose,” Jeanette Doran, senior staff attorney at NCICL, said in a statement. “Now, North Carolina is just giving away $60 million and not requiring a single new job. There is no public purpose in that. The public gains nothing.”
NCICL filed the suit on behalf of private citizens Evelyn Richards, Jane Johnson, Bernard Harrell and the Wake County Taxpayers Association.
The group challenged and lost a court fight against incentives given to Dell to entice the firm to build a manufacturing plant in Winston-Salem. The Supreme Court ruled that such incentives are legal.
Goodyear operates a plant in Fayetteville. Bridgestone-Firestone has a plant inn Wilson.
