There's something about $100-million-plus projects that politicians love. The real question is whether these taxpayer- and commuter-funded projects are money well spent.
In December 1994, Philadelphia and Camden received $100 million from the Clinton administration to establish empowerment zones in economically depressed neighborhoods. Money was committed to job training, social services, and tax incentives for business in Philadelphia's West Parkside, American Street, and North Central Philadelphia sections, and in North Camden.
At the launch of the program in mid-1995, President Bill Clinton told leaders of Philadelphia and other cities that got funding that they may be "creating the way we do business as Americans in the 21st century."
Fast-forward to 2010 and we barely remember the program. Only 12 of the 32 cities that received empowerment-zone funding saw an increase in jobs between 1995 and 2003. (Philadelphia wasn't one of them.)
Research by the Brookings Institution in 2005 showed that the effect of the empowerment zones nationwide was "marginal at best."
Another big-dollar dazzler, the Aker Philadelphia Shipyard, exists today mainly because of $429 million in federal and state incentives that attracted a shipbuilder here in the 1990s. However, if Aker doesn't get new orders soon, the sun may set again on shipbuilding in Philadelphia. Layoffs have begun to trim the workforce of more than 1,000.
Finally, one need only look at how the Delaware River Port Authority has spent $485 million in the name of economic development over the last 12 years. There was $1.75 million to attract the Army-Navy football game to Philadelphia for six years, $10 million for the soccer stadium and other development in Chester, and $500,000 committed to move the Barnes Foundation from Lower Merion to the Benjamin Franklin Parkway.
