When is the last time you’ve seen a column as the one written by a regular columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch? I’ve copied it in total below.

Indeed, when have you EVER seen a column with similar criticism of corporate greed in the Plain Dealer? Never!

Can you ever imagine Brent Larkin writing such a piece?

I don’t think so. It just isn’t in his or the Plain Dealer’s DNA.

Who gets a break?
By BILL McCLELLAN
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Sunday, Apr. 25 2010

Sometimes there are discordant notes in the news. Stories that might make sense by themselves make no sense when paired with another story.

For instance, there was a news item this month about St. Louis County Executive Charlie Dooley writing a letter to Bridgeton Mayor Conrad Bowers in which Dooley urged Bowers to reject a plan to give $7.2 million in tax concessions to Walmart.

Less than a week later, there was a story about the St. Louis County Council granting Panera Bread $130,000 in tax abatements to help the company move its headquarters from Richmond Heights to Sunset Hills. There was no mention of Dooley opposing this tax break.

If you oppose giving a tax break to Walmart, why wouldn’t you oppose one for Panera?

It might seem especially easy to be against Walmart. In order to sell things, Walmart needs a store. It makes no sense for the taxpayers to subsidize a store for one of the world’s most successful companies.

But Panera is not exactly struggling. Despite the recession, revenue was up 4 percent last year to $1.35 billion. Yet, the County Council voted in favor of a tax abatement with no apparent objection from the county executive.

As I said, there is something jarring about those two stories viewed side by side.

But things get more jarring if you take those two stories and put them next to any of the recent stories about budget cuts.

States are broke. Cities are broke. Counties are broke. Budgets are being slashed. Worthwhile programs are being cut. Education, the lifeline to the future, has not been spared.

Meanwhile, we’re giving tax breaks to successful companies. And for what?

Last November, St. Louis announced that the city was providing a $300,000 loan to the law firm Lewis, Rice & Fingersh so it could move two blocks — from one privately owned building to another. The second building also received about $15 million in various tax credits and loans.

Try to forget for the moment the inherent unfairness of the city providing financial help for one privately owned building to recruit a tenant from another privately owned building. Instead, ask yourself why the city ought to be providing financial help to a successful law firm.

Another law firm, Thompson Coburn, got $700,000 in tax incentives to remain downtown.

Then there’s Centene, a hugely successful company. It could afford to expand on its own, but it was the object of a bidding war. St. Louis wanted it for its Ballpark Village, another incentive-laden project. Clayton wanted it. Clayton won the bidding war by offering a 50 percent tax abatement for real and personal property taxes for up to $22 million, a sales tax exemption on construction materials and a sales tax exemption on personal property. In addition, Centene received $8 million from the state and roadwork contributions from St. Louis County.

There are two things wrong with all of this. First, all of these incentives
lead people to do projects they would not otherwise do.

For instance, let me take you to a front-page story from October 2007. The story was about three big projects downtown. These projects were supposed to reverse the decline of downtown. Together, the projects called for more than $330 million in public money.

One was Ballpark Village. The second was the new headquarters for Centene. The third was a plan to revive the St. Louis Centre mall site.

Two and a half years later, Ballpark Village is a softball field, and that’s an upgrade from a mud hole. The Centene headquarters is going up in Clayton. St. Louis Centre remains dilapidated. Its developer went bankrupt.

But the big thing wrong with all of these abatements and incentives is the shifting of responsibility. In the old days, if a merchant wanted to build a store, he built the store. If a company wanted to move from one location to another, it paid for the move.

Furthermore, businesses paid taxes. Small businesses still do.

But some of the biggest and most successful ones don’t pay their share anymore.

Meanwhile, programs are being slashed. This newspaper recently published a story about plans to close the emergency room at Metropolitan St. Louis Psychiatric Center and the Southeast Missouri Mental Health Center in Farmington. Those two hospitals had 4,634 emergency room visits last year. There will be no place for these people to go, said a social worker.

Put that story next to the one about the $7.2 million in tax breaks for one Walmart Supercenter. Try to make sense of it.

Roldo Bartimole celebrates 50 years of news reporting this year. He published and wrote Point of View, a newsletter about Cleveland, for 32 years. He worked for the Plain Dealer and Wall Street Journal in the 1960s.

He was a 2004 Cleveland Journalism Hall of Fame recipient and won the national Joe Callaway Award for Civic Courage in 1991.