With Connecticut’s economy still struggling after years of job-killing tax hikes under Democrat rule, Failed Governor Dan Malloy’s administration appears to have been caught inflating job creation numbers in an direct effort to hide more of his economic failures from the public. A new state auditor’s report shows Connecticut’s Department of Economic and Community Development, whose commissioner was appointed by Malloy, has been overstating the amount of jobs created by state-sponsored programs, while also underreporting the amount of tax dollars used for the programs.
After years of high-profile business departures by General Electric, MassMutual, and Alexion Pharmaceuticals as well as repeated fiscal crises and credit downgrades, it’s no surprise that Malloy’s administration would try to hide his poor performance on job creation and downplay the state’s fiscal crisis. While Malloy has called it quits and won’t run for another term, each of the Democrat gubernatorial candidates running to succeed him will be forced to answer for Dan Malloy’s misleading actions.
Here's more from the report in question:
DECD understated the Urban and Industrial Site Reinvestment total tax credits awarded by $71,000,000 (12% of total) and overstated total credits earned by $14,900,000 (5%).
…DECD understated the amount reported by $73,794,800 (9%) in its portfolio, because it did not include 14 projects. We also noted that the portfolio of MAA [Manufacturing Assistance Act] assistance does not include 297 inactive projects that received $242,401,364 of financial assistance.
…DECD overstated the cumulative net state revenue for the Manufacturing Assistance Act by $259,676,000 (27%)…
DECD likely overstated the number of jobs retained because certain companies received funding multiple times or under multiple programs. Companies that received funding multiple times may have had a requirement to retain the same jobs each time they received funding. DECD counted these jobs multiple times.
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