As states increasingly bring economic development deals into the sunlight, they are increasingly also doing so in ways that allow users to map the geographic distributions of those subsidies. Of the 116,000 entries in our
Subsidy Tracker
database, nearly 33,000 deals in 16 states can now be mapped to an exact address, while about 55,000 deals can be mapped to the nearest city. With
new data
online and ready for mapping, especially unpublished data just obtained from the state of Massachusetts, we encourage our followers to take our data and make the most of it.
As those who follow Good Jobs First know, since 2000 we have issued
several studies
mapping the geographic distribution of company-specific economic development subsidy deals—and then analyzing them for their pro-sprawl bias.
We are proud of the methodology we pioneered in creating these studies and have freely given away our data and advice to others seeking to replicate the work. These studies were tedious: we obtained lists of subsidy deals using state Freedom of Information laws and then spent months either obtaining street addresses or cleaning up the addresses provided.
Improved state disclosure systems combined with our Subsidy Tracker tool have trimmed many of the difficulties from that process allowing citizens and journalists to analyze deals for a wide variety of issues: poverty, race, tax-base wealth, population density, whether the worksite is served by public transportation, whether jobs are being created in communities hardest hit by plant closings and mass layoffs, etc.
As more states put subsidy data online in a downloadable and mapping-friendly format, we will continue to grow Subsidy Tracker and mash up geographic data in new ways.