‘Such a Dumpster Fire, and Nobody Wants to Go Near It’
Despite claims by Republicans, including then-Governor Pat McCrory, that the wide-sweeping anti-LGBT law known as HB2 was having no negative affects, an Associated Press analysis finds it will cost North Carolina more than $3.76 billion over 12 years. By the end of this year, the AP says the Tar Heel State will have lost “more than $525 million.” But it doesn’t end there.
“North Carolina could lose hundreds of millions more because the NCAA is avoiding the state, usually a favored host. The group is set to announce sites for various championships through 2022, and North Carolina won’t be among them as long as the law is on the books. The NAACP also has initiated a national economic boycott,” the AP reports.
The AP calls its own report “an underestimation of the law’s true costs” because it ignored reports that it could not quantify.Â
“Some projects that left, such as a Lionsgate television production that backed out of plans in Charlotte, weren’t included because of a lack of data on their economic impact.”
That one project sent more than 100 jobs to Canada. The AP says “more than 2,900 direct jobs” went elsewhere.
Those include PayPal canceling a 400-job project in Charlotte, CoStar backing out of negotiations to bring 700-plus jobs to the same area, and Deutsche Bank scuttling a plan for 250 jobs in the Raleigh area. Other companies that backed out include Adidas, which is building its first U.S. sports shoe factory employing 160 near Atlanta rather than a High Point site, and Voxpro, which opted to hire hundreds of customer support workers in Athens, Georgia, rather than the Raleigh area.
“We couldn’t set up operations in a state that was discriminating against LGBT” people, Dan Kiely, Voxpro founder and CEO, said in an interview.
A planned PayPal expansion was expected “to contribute more than $200 million annually to North Carolina’s gross domestic product — an overall measure of the economy. By the end of 2028, the state expected PayPal to have added $2.66 billion to the state economy.”
Shelly Green, the CEO of the Durham Convention & Visitors Bureau summed up the effects of HB2:Â “When you think about it, this whole thing is just such a Dumpster fire, and nobody wants to go near it.”
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Image by Nathania Johnson via Flickr and a CC licenseÂ