Naming and Shaming Corporate Welfare Queens

Corporate Welfare | October 6, 2015

By Patrick Tuohey | Read Time 1 minute minutes

A mayor in Maine has made the news for wanting to publicly list welfare recipients on the town's website.

I don't share his policy view on this matter, but I would like to see the same "naming and shaming" program applied to corporations who accept public subsidies from municipal government. And I am not alone. My colleague Patrick Ishmael recently wrote about new standards from the Government Accounting Standards Board (GASB), In short, the new standards increase the amount of information that local governments have to publicly report about the number and type of tax abatements.

One shortcoming of the new standards is that they do not require localities to list the various subsidies by company. This would be an additional measure of government transparency that localities could adopt on their own through city ordinances. It would tell us which companies are the welfare queens of crony capitalism.

About the Author

Patrick Tuohey

Patrick Tuohey is a senior fellow at the Show-Me Institute and co-founder and policy director of the Better Cities Project. Both organizations aim to deliver the best in public policy research from around the country to local leaders, communities and voters. He works to foster understanding of the consequences — often unintended — of policies regarding economic development, taxation, education, policing, and transportation. In 2021, Patrick served as a fellow of the Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics at the University of Kansas. He is currently a visiting fellow at the Yorktown Foundation for Public Policy in Virginia and also a regular opinion columnist for The Kansas City Star. Previously, Patrick served as the director of municipal policy at the Show-Me Institute. Patrick’s essays have been published widely in print and online including in newspapers around the country, The Hill, and Reason Magazine. His essays on economic development, education, and policing have been published in the three most recent editions of the Greater Kansas City Urban League’s “State of Black Kansas City.” Patrick’s work on the intersection of those topics spurred parents and activists to oppose economic development incentive projects where they are not needed and was a contributing factor in the KCPT documentary, “Our Divided City” about crime, urban blight, and public policy in Kansas City. Patrick received a bachelor’s degree from Boston College in 1993.

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