Last week the Raimondo administration granted Greystone of Lincoln Inc. a 10-year, $460,000 tax credit for expanding its workforce by about 10 percent.
The grant is the first one under the Qualified Jobs Incentive Tax Credit program, which was created last year to help companies in Rhode Island expand their local workforce as well as help out-of-state companies make the decision to move here.
The importance of this new tool in the state's economic development kit cannot be overstated. Former Gov. Lincoln D. Chafee took the attitude of fiscal prudence too far, rejecting financial incentives as an important part of the state's arsenal for supporting companies and creating jobs in the Ocean State.
Of course Rhode Island cannot afford to offer tens of millions of dollars to major companies so they will relocate here. Georgia reportedly gave Mercedes-Benz USA $23 million in incentives to move its headquarters from New Jersey to Atlanta.
Still, programs such as the Qualified Jobs Incentive Tax Credits, the Rebuild Rhode Island real estate tax credits and the Brownfields Remediation and Economic Development Fund are attractive complements to the administration's efforts to improve the tax and regulatory environment.
Will they be enough to land the General Electric Co., for instance, which is looking at leaving its longtime Connecticut home? Only time will tell.
But the improving of the state's business environment is clearly putting Rhode Island into the conversation. And that is not something that has happened in a long time. •