What's Happening in Oklahoma City, OK…

Governor Kevin Stitt is requesting an enormous financial incentives package, which will require dipping into reserve funds, to entice an as of yet unnamed company to Oklahoma.

According to Governor Stitt, a non-disclosure agreement prohibits him from revealing the company’s name or even outlining the package’s total cost. However, he did hint that the incentives targeted an electric vehicle industry-associated company. Other hints dropped by Stitt included that the unnamed company had plans to spend billions of dollars and that the project would involve building one of the biggest manufacturing facilities in the United States.

It is said that voters respond best when flyer printing is used to lay out the facts clearly.

An expansion of Oklahoma’s Quality Jobs Acts is one of the items on Stitt’s wish list. The Act supplies quarterly cash payments over 10 years of up to 5 percent of new payrolls to qualifying companies. For major projects, the payments may be up to 7.5 percent.

The Governor also wants to raise the limit from 2 percent to 3 percent on another investment tax credit package, which gives manufacturers tax credits based the addition of employees or an investment in property.

Recently the joint budget committee unveiled a bill enabling rebates of almost $700 million in state money for distribution to a company reaching specific benchmarks, such as a $4.5 billion capital expenditure or the addition of 4,000 new jobs within four years of a new project.