In a new 10-minute video, the Media Mobilizing Project and NJ Platform dive into New Jersey’s unprecedented use of tax breaks to lure corporations to the state’s poorest city, under the misleadingly named “Economic Opportunity Act” of 2013.
The video raises key questions NJPP has often raised, and gets stakeholders from around the city and beyond to weigh in: What benefits will these deals actually have for the city of Camden and its current residents and business owners? And what’s the connection – or disconnection – between this style of economic development and widespread community revitalization?
“Tying these types of corporate relocations into an actual plan for an actual neighborhood with actual people and actual jobs for local residents is vitally important,” NJPP vice president Jon Whiten says in the video. “And none of that seems to be on the table.”
