A disclosure law is a law that requires any company that takes or uses public subsidies, to report annually, what the money was used for and what the results of those actions were. Some active and effective examples are the State of Minnesota with {S.F. 2893} passed in 1995 and updated as recently as 2000 and the State of Maine with {Title 5, Chapter 383}. These laws, like those just cited, are aimed at holding corporations accountable to the taxpayers who helped fund a specific project that the corporation requested “public assistance” on.

Rationale

The taxpayer has a right to know what return they can expect on their investment in a particular company. For example, a Wal-Mart comes to the city council saying that they will bring 250 new jobs to town but as a precursor to their coming, demanding a tax abatement, the city obliges. Now what? That’s it? So now the city paid a multi-billion dollar company $25 million to build a Wal-Mart in Any town, USA and all the taxpayers get are a few lousy low-wage jobs and a drain on their health care system. In fact, you can read a Florida newspaper's review of businesses failure to make good on their empty promises by clicking here.