Resource: Good Jobs First

"Good Jobs First is a national policy resource center for grassroots groups and public officials, promoting corporate and government accountability in economic development and smart growth for working families. We provide timely, accurate information on best practices in state and local job subsidies, and on the many ties between smart growth and good jobs. Good Jobs First works with a very broad spectrum of organizations, providing research, training, communications and consulting assistance.

"The Corporate Research Project, an affiliate of Good Jobs First, assists community, environmental and labor organizations in researching and analyzing companies and industries. The Project is designed to be a resource to aid activism. Consequently, our focus is on strategic research, i.e., identifying the information activists can use as leverage to get business to behave in a socially responsible manner.

"Good Jobs First-Illinois, our partnership project with the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability, was created in 2001 in response to the state's long history of subsidy abuse and its rich history of subsidy reform efforts. Its work contributed to the Prairie State's adoption of a pathbreaking disclosure and accountability law in 2003.

"Good Jobs New York, our partnership project with the Fiscal Policy Institute, promotes policies that hold government officials and corporations accountable to taxpayers, particularly when economic development agencies give expensive subsidies to large corporations that threaten to leave New York City. Since the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, GJNY has also tracked rebuilding dollars, documenting that most federal resources have benefited big businesses, not community priorities such as job creation or affordable housing." -- from the website. <http://www.goodjobsfirst.org>