In April, the Michigan Strategic Fund sent a report to the legislature claiming businesses that received grants from the "21st Century Job Trust Fund’s Centers of Energy Excellence Program" created 75% of the jobs promised. That's a solid C effort. Room for improvement, sure, you can tell everyone is making a good-faith effort.
Problem is, according to Auditor General Thomas McTavish, that report was a little off. These businesses, subsidized by the public treasury, didn't create 75% of the jobs promised. They created...drum roll...just 19% of the jobs promised.
Detroit Free Press: The fund’s failure to update its report to lawmakers with information it knew, combined with its failure to verify job creation numbers reported by the companies that received the grants, “may have negatively impacted the Legislature’s ability to correctly evaluate program results,” the report said.
According to the report, the Michigan Strategic Fund — administered by the Michigan Economic Development Corp. — attributed the inaccurate jobs report to “an oversight.”
That's some hell of an oversight. If the "21st Century Job Trust Fund’s Centers of Energy Excellence Program" was a baseball player, it would be Toronto Blue Jays catcher J.P. Arencibia. Actually, Arencibia is at least hitting .196.
The program doled out $64 million in corporate welfare last year. Among the problems with the initial report, according to the Auditor General, was one company--A123 Systems--reported creating 12% more jobs than initially promised. Turns out, that firm went bankrupt last October--a good six months before legislators were told it created 112% of the jobs promised.
By the way, that 19% figure is self-reported by the very same job-creating companies that was supposed to create all those job in exchange for our money.
Relentless positive action!
