The unsavory practice of poaching jobs

Daily Herald Editorial Board

It’s hard to imagine anyone or any organization that has been more critical than we’ve been of Illinois’ ill-advised, premature and audacious increase in the state income tax.

But that doesn’t keep us from being offended by the responses of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and some of our opportunistic neighbors.

The competition among states for business investment is intense and natural. We all want more jobs and the tax revenues that successful business operations produce. But New Jersey and other states take the competitive spirit an insult too far with aggressive radio and print advertising campaigns appealing to Illinois businesses to pick up stakes and move out.

Christie went so far last week as to personally lobby Illinois businesses — including, unsuccessfully, Northbrook-based Kraft Foods, which couldn’t make the scheduling adjustments necessary to meet. He said he paid for the trip himself because he was on personal business, but that hardly excused the untoward image of one state’s governor inserting himself personally into the affairs of a fellow state with the sole purpose of opportunistically poaching jobs.

New Jersey’s advertising, which includes a letter-writing campaign by the lieutenant governor to more than 500 Illinois businesses, touts the state’s “commitment” to “fiscal responsibility and lower taxes.” The themes are similar in campaigns promoted by Indiana and Iowa.

The cynic in us is inclined to tell Illinois leaders that this is what we get when we settle for convenient solutions to complicated problems. And it is. But there is something more to this behavior than simply the potential to lose jobs, as significant as that potential is. These activities border on taunting, and they’re tainted with decidedly political overtones. Both prominent Republicans, Christie and Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels have shown interest in higher office, after all, and their states’ attacks on Illinois’ financial condition are laced with the rhetoric of economic politics.

These political overtones are emphasized when the actual statistics come into play. New Jersey’s tax burden was considered worst in the nation, for instance in a 2008 report by the Tax Foundation, a Washington research group. It remains worse than Illinois’ tax burden even after our increases. Its corporate tax rate is only slightly lower than Illinois’, and, for that matter, our state’s new personal tax rates remain lower than those of all the critical states except Indiana.

So as much as we may identify with emotional calls like New Jersey’s expensive taunt, “Had enough of outrageous tax increases?”, we have to acknowledge that in one sense Illinois is just beginning to catch up with its critics on that score. But more to the point, this kind of nasty politicking does nothing to help any of our states deal with difficult and complex economic challenges and much to stir acrimony and resentment into the political atmosphere.