Tracking Corporate Subsidies, Exposing Misconduct, Winning Better Deals
Workshop Description:
In this workshop, you will learn how to uncover the true costs of corporate subsidies and economic development deals, and how to turn that research into leverage for your community. We’ll demystify the many ways public dollars flow to private corporations, how to easily find patterns of corporate misconduct, and how to quantify the revenue losses governments absorb through tax breaks and incentives. You’ll get hands-on training with three key databases —Subsidy Tracker, Violation Tracker, and Tax Break Tracker — and learn how to connect subsidies to company behavior, spot hidden costs to taxpayers, and what to demand to ensure promises are kept. We’ll also cover community benefit agreements and ways to add enforceable accountability measures like local hiring, wage standards, and clawbacks — and how unions, policymakers, and grassroots groups have successfully pushed for reforms and better deals.
Workshop Leader:
Arlene Martínez is the deputy executive director and communications director at Good Jobs First, which seeks to end the use of wasteful corporate subsidies and empower grassroots and established constituencies building a more democratic economy. Good Jobs First provides extensive research and technical assistance to pop-up groups, campaigners, policymakers, journalists, academics and others in their work to protect public services and invest in proven economic development (including schools, parks, and workforce development). Before joining the nonprofit in 2020, Arlene was a journalist at outlets including Hispanic Link News Service in Washington, D.C., the Los Angeles Times, The (Allentown, PA.) Morning Call, and the USA TODAY Network. She became passionate about using budgets, end-of-year spending reports, and other documents to tell stories about the choices elected officials make when it comes to who and what gets prioritized. She’s based in Ventura, CA.
