SECAUCUS – Hartz Mountain Industries has filed an appeal with the Appellate Division of the Superior Court of New Jersey to vacate the New Jersey Economic Development Agency’s (EDA) award of millions of dollars in state tax credits to Panasonic if the company moves from Secaucus to Newark.
Earlier this year the state EDA approved a package of tax incentives worth $102.4 million under the New Jersey Urban Transit Hub Tax Credit Program.
Panasonic currently leases 1 million square feet of space at 1 Meadowlands Parkway from Hartz Mountain Industries. The location includes 300,000 square feet of office space, plus 700,000 square feet if warehouse space, and serves as Panasonic’s U.S. corporate headquarters.
But after 34 years in town Panasonic is contemplating a move elsewhere, and is considering relocating to Newark.
The company is also considering sites in other states, Including California, New York, Georgia, and Illinois.
To keep the multi-billion-dollar company, and its 800-plus jobs, in the Garden State, the EDA suggested that Panasonic apply for New Jersey’s Urban Transit Hub Tax Credit. This application was later approved.
The Urban Transit Hub Tax Credit Program gives tax credits to certain companies that employ at least 250 full-time workers and build or rent office space in or near nine designated urban transit communities, one of which is Newark.
Secaucus, by contrast, is not among the nine communities included in the Urban Transit Hub Program.
Ever since the EDA approved the tax package, however, Secaucus officials and Hartz have cried foul, arguing that the tax credits should not be used to lure a corporation from one New Jersey municipality to another. Hartz and Secaucus have both claimed the tax incentives offered to Panasonic are a misuse of the Urban Transit Hub Program.
In a release late this afternoon announcing Hartz’s appeal, the company stated: “The Hartz appeal is predicated on four main points highlighting significant deficiencies in the EDA’s approval process. The appeal claims that the Agency acted outside the scope of authority granted to it by the legislature because contrary to the requirements of the law, no new jobs are being created at the proposed Panasonic facility in Newark and that no consideration was given in the State’s analysis of this application to the loss of jobs and revenues to the Town of Secaucus, where the Panasonic’s corporate offices are now located.”
According to Hartz Senior Vice President Allen Magrini, “The law itself is an invitation for businesses from other states to relocate to nine designated New Jersey urban cities, and that certainly is positive for the State. However, the tortured application of the law in this case has effectively established an open invitation for one New Jersey municipality to poach businesses from another at the taxpayers’ expense. This was certainly not the intention of our Legislature, especially when, as is the case here, there are no new jobs being created as a result of the $102 million grant. Under EDA’s policy, which is not supported by the law, Panasonic did not even certify they will leave the State but for the grant. It is entirely possible that the State of New Jersey will pay $102 million to keep a company here that never intended to leave, which deprives the State’s taxpayers of $102 million to attract or create new business activity to New Jersey.” – E. Assata Wright
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