Gun wheeler-dealer

I'm not a big proponent of local and state governments crazily sweetening the pot to bring in new jobs. All these crazy bidding wars to buy your town a few years worth a few jobs. And, as the incentives peter out, there's always the incentive for a company to look for another package. To me, it's second only to throwing up yet another casino, with all the swell jobs that brings with it.

But, hey, I'm sure that these payola deals do occasionally work out, and that the folks who get the promised jobs - however temporary - are happy to have the work.

Still, there are some deals that just seem preposterous. And one of them is going down in a small town in Georgia, where they managed to bag a gun factory that will employ 300. For this privilege, they shelled out $39M worth of goodies.

Taurus Holdings, welcome to Bainbridge, Georgia.

What clinched the deal was not just the wining, the dining, the ample tax credits, a free factory, and everything else that went into the competition for those gunsmith jobs:

In late 2017, Rick McCaskill, head of the Development Authority of Bainbridge and Decatur County, began giving tours to Taurus executives of their prospective corporate campus. On a visit, the executives heard a welcome sound: the pop-pop-pop of a nearby police gun range, the sort of amenity that could be a zoning challenge in other jurisdictions.

“That really warmed them up,” McCaskill said. (Source: Bloomberg)

Needless to say, Taurus wasn't looking around New England where they would be far less likely to find a gun range. Not that we don't have them. And not that we don't have gun manufacturers. Smith & Wesson HQ is in Springfield, Massachusetts.

But we're not exactly gun-friendly/gun-obsessed.

Anyway, the going rate of incentives to bring a job to town is $50K. At $130K per job, it looks like Bainbridge and Decatur County overpaid. But they're cool with it. So far.

“Right now we’re heavy on the give-it-away side of the pendulum,” McCaskill said. “If you’re going to get a project these days, you really have to put a lot into it.”

Taurus is actually a Brazilian company, and their claim to fame is that they offer cheap alternatives to Smith & Wessons and Glocks. How wonderful that cheaper guns can get into more and more hands. Good for the Taurus bottom line. 80% of its revenues come for the good old US of A. (American exceptionalism at its finest.)

The plant that's going to Georgia is emigrating from Florida. The paltry sum that Florida had been giving them - just $369K in tax refunds over a seven-year stretch - had run out. Then there was the little matter of those meanies in the Florida legislature - who used to be so gun-fun - who raised the age of firearms purchase in the wake of the Orlando nightclub and Parkland High School gun sprees.

“I think Florida was really up for grabs,” McCaskill said. A big part of his pitch was that Georgia “is a very gun-friendly state,” he said.

Anyway, one of the reasons Taurus guns were cheaper in the past is that they were defective. A few years ago:

Taurus settled a class action lawsuit that alleged nine different models of its firearms fired unintentionally when bumped or dropped, even with safeties on. The company agreed to buy back or repair the models without admission of wrongdoing.

And now that they've had to improve the quality of their wares, they need to wheadle tax incentives out of local government.

So they swapped out oranges for peaches. In October they notified Florida that they'd be parting company, and laying off all their employees.

“That’s a part of life,” McCaskill said.

Interesting to hear the word "life" uttered in the same breath as merchants of death, no?