Incentives won't be secret

The Huntsman administration has deep-sixed an idea that would have kept secret the dollar amounts of state incentives offered to companies wanting to expand in or relocate to Utah.

Chris Roybal, Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.'s senior economic adviser, said Wednesday that the move does not represent a change from an earlier position but that it seemed to be "hopefully the best compromise to allow us to compete economically but, because it involves tax dollars, still have disclosure with the public."

The compromise involves having ready information about the success of the incentive programs.

Members of the Utah Board of Business and Economic Development's Incentives Committee broached the idea of keeping secret the dollar amounts of Industrial Assistance Fund awards — at least until jobs were created by the recipient companies. The IAF has been used to entice existing Utah companies to create high-paying jobs or out-of-state companies to put operations in Utah.

Huntsman told the Deseret Morning News editorial board last week that such secrecy might not become policy, but he expressed concern that having the incentive amount public leads to "an arms race of sorts" with other states trying to land the new jobs.

The IAF committee meets privately and forwards recommendations to the full 15-member business board, which then votes in public on the recommendations. Dollar amounts have always been public, although a few companies have requested that their names be kept confidential until they decided whether to act on Utah's incentive.

"This is not a situation of changing policy, per se," Roybal said Wednesday. "There was a review undertaken to consider what options the state may have relative to the timing of the disclosure of incentives. At the end of that process, it was determined that the best situation for all parties would be to continue to keep company names confidential early on, if need be, but to have disclosure on the amount of dollars or credits being offered upfront as much as we can.

"That would allow us to accomplish two things: to keep the confidence of the company's name, but erring on the side of public disclosure to allow the public to see what types of incentives are offered for certain types of projects."

Whether company names are revealed at the time of the incentive award will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis, Roybal said. Typically, the name is not made public if the company faces employment issues. Those might crop up if, say, a company is considering consolidating a plant in another state with operations in Utah.