Utah incentives for high-paying jobs at issue

"In my opinion, that's a really kind of a tough thing to have a hard rule on," he said. "What I would hope is the role of the board is to exercise wisdom and to actually say, 'it makes sense here, it doesn't make sense here' and also to just really keep in mind that whether average or median, that wage ... is a high-wage job for that group of people."

He said he favors guidelines with flexibility that allow the state to incentivize jobs offered to the lowest-quartile earners that would bring their pay to an average level. He wants to avoid providing incentives to companies that typically pay in the highest quartile but are offering only average wages to Utahns.

"To me, there are so many contextual and situational factors that I like to have a goal or a guideline we're trying to meet, but I'd like as a board member to have an ability to consider everything, (including) the data, and come to a meeting of the minds that 'this particular deal is a good deal with the average' and 'this one's a bad deal because of that average,"' Brittain said.

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