“ADM details bid for tax breaks”

That’s the headline in today’s Tribune business section.  Here’s the link.

This makes me sick.  $24 million for 100 jobs — that’s $240,000 per job.  And they’re not asking for a reduction in their corporate income tax, because they acknowledge that they have had “years in which its state corporate income tax is minimal.”  They’re asking to “retain employees’ income tax withholdings.”  In other words, they’re  not asking for a tax break — they’re just plain asking for the state to give them money.

And ADM is very closely tied to the Merc, that is, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.  It’s really hard to imagine that they would decline to relocate to Chicago in favor of some competing suitor.  St. Louis was floated as an alternative — that seems unlikely, given that the city’s economy is as troubled as Detroit’s, but, in the grand scheme of things, I would rather they relocate there than that we pay ADM to stay here.  For that matter, it may help Decatur, and thus help the state, to have ADM in St. Louis, since it’s only a two hour drive away and would keep ADM’s corporate executives more closely connected to their facilities there.  (I say “two hour drive” because, growing up, Aunt Carol and Uncle Bob lived in Decatur, and Ya-Ya and Papou lived in St. Louis, so our typical summer vacation was a drive down from our Detroit suburb to these two places.) 

I used to say that, growing up, I was accustomed to big cities being corrupt, having the example of Detroit on the front page of the paper.  But moving to Illinois, I wasn’t prepared for the state to be just as corrupt.  I guess I’ve gotten used to it now.

(Side note:  a while back, when the last big tax credit deal was in the news, I wrote a letter to the editor in the form of a letter to Governor Quinn, telling him that I would generously agree not to move out-of-state if only he would give me some personal tax credits.  Tribune letters-to-the-editor policy is to not allow “open letters” so the LTTE editor changed the pronouns in my letter, making it pretty lame.  And the next day, one of the local columnists used exactly the same device for his own column, but as a true open letter, because columnists are allowed to do this!  I was wronged!  — and continued to dream of being able to write columns rather than just letters.)