U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once said that &8220;sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants&8221; &8212; it&8217;s unfortunate, then, that the state of Minnesota wants to keep its residents in the dark about who&8217;s benefiting from the JOBZ tax break program.

Details on who benefits from the Job Opportunity Building Zones program are considered &8220;private&8221; information under state law, even though the revenue offset by the tax program affects all taxpayers.

Under the program, select businesses in rural areas are exempt from most state and local taxes for a predetermined period as long as they meet certain criteria. In 2004 and 2005, JOBZ businesses received $18.7 million in tax breaks. That&8217;s $18.7 million that didn&8217;t go to state and local tax coffers that otherwise would have. That money, while miniscule in terms of the overall $30 billion state budget, has an impact; an impact taxpayers should be informed about.

Making the data public is also the only way for independent third parties to verify that the program is operating as it should. In New York state, for example, details on tax breaks of a similar program were private until a newspaper filed a lawsuit to make the data public. Once public, it was determined that many companies that had benefited from the program in the state under the premise that they were creating &8220;new&8221; jobs had merely reorganized previous businesses under new names.

That&8217;s the sort of under-the-table dealing that can happen if government operates in the shadows. It sounds cynical, yes, but it happens over and over again. If there truly were no underhanded deals going on in the state JOBZ program, then there would be no reason not to make the data public.

&8212; Austin Daily Herald, Dec. 28