CT Blue

This story may make Dan Malloy’s day:

General Electric says it will reimburse the state for the massive incentive package that helped convince the company to move its headquarters here from Connecticut, as it looks to sell its future Fort Point headquarters property and scales back its ambitions.

The board of MassDevelopment — a quasi-public agency that owns part of the property — approved a plan on Thursday to jointly market the 2.7-acre site with GE. The sale proceeds will reimburse the agency for the $87.4 million in state money that has been used to acquire and prepare the Fort Point parcel.

GE, however, is not leaving Boston. The struggling company said it will still move into two brick buildings at Necco Court after renovations are completed, but won’t come close to creating the 800 jobs it originally promised.

GE didn’t leave Connecticut because of taxes, it left because it thought it could attract young workers because Boston is cooler than Stamford. It was and is a failing company, however, and would have eventually failed in Connecticut just as it will in Boston.

Here’s an odd thing. The above article was, as I write, just added to the Boston Globe’s site, but there was another article in the Globe this morning that I found a bit surprising. Guess who’s coming to Boston (or, more accurately, beefing up in Boston) without, apparently, getting a massive infusion of taxpayer money to do so?

Google on Wednesday confirmed long-rumored plans that it will fill a new Kendall Square office tower, giving the company room to double its workforce here.

The tech giant said it will lease most of a 16-story tower on Main Street in Kendall Square on which construction will soon begin — on the site of the four-story office building the company currently occupies. Eventually, Google’s Cambridge workforce could grow to as many as 3,000, from its current 1,500.

There’s no indication in the article that Boston or Massachusetts paid any bribe money to Google (ala New York’s ridiculous bribe to Amazon) to entice it to add to its Boston presence. Not only that, Google will add 1500 jobs, while GE was only going to add 800. That means, going by the cost per estimated GE job, that Google passed up a potential bribe of over $163 million. Of course, that’s chump change to Google, but that didn’t stop Amazon. It may make sense for cities in the Rust Belt to bribe these companies, but it seems pretty obvious it’s unnecessary for cities like Boston and New York. Still, I’ve a feeling that the Google situation will remain an outlier.