Columbus City Council tonight is expected to approve a 10-year, 75-percent property tax abatement for United Parcel Service to expand its Trabue Road facility, retaining 748 jobs and creating 75 new ones. Columbus Development Director Steve Schoeny says the deal ensures the jobs stay in the city.
UPS is the world's largest shipper with a market cap of 90 billion dollars. In 2015, it reported a profit of 4.8 billion dollars. Council development committee chair Elizabeth Brown is sponsoring the tax break legislation. She says other cities give public subsidies to private businesses, so why shouldn't Columbus?
That's nonsense, says community activist and former council candidate Joe Motil, who came to the last council meeting when the legislation was first introduced to speak against it. Motil says this would be the second tax break council has approved in the last month for a company with profits of one billion dollars or more.
Motil says federal figures show public subsidies for private businesses shift the tax burden downward.
In late May, the Ohio Tax Credit Authority approved a 217 thousand dollar state tax break for the same project.
