JOB INCENTIVES

Attracting businesses to locate in a community requires a combination of inducements: Affordable wages, stable work force, good work ethic, competitive construction costs, cooperative governmental agencies, transportation links and available and affordable sites, to name just a few.

Over the years, another major inducement has been to defer or reduce taxes for new businesses and industry, particularly those that provide jobs. The rationale is that these additions to the local economy have a positive impact, and the loss of tax revenue that would have been paid by the business or industry is offset by increases in taxes paid by the new employees, plus the other contributions of an expanding payroll base.

Out of this line of thinking has come any number of programs and opportunities for enticing businesses to locate in a particular state or town. A decade ago the Missouri Legislature created enterprise zones that have permitted dozens of new employers to enjoy tax benefits for up to 10 years while expanding the job base and infusing local payrolls. Skeptics of the enterprise zones may have considered such largess to be self-defeating. But in Cape Girardeau, more than 100 businesses and companies have taken advantage of the enterprise-zone concept. The result: Hundreds of new jobs and a spurt in the development of the city as a regional trade hub.

Now a potential customer-service operation is eying Cape Girardeau as the location for as many as 200 jobs. The city will consider its options under the enterprise-zone concept. Given the history of the benefits of the enterprise zone over the past 10 years, it can be expected that the city will seek to make Cape Girardeau as attractive as possible to the prospective company. The ripple effect of those new jobs would add to the already strong showing in overall development that Cape Girardeau has enjoyed in recent years.