Well Well Wells

Wells Dairy Corporate Headquarters, paid for by you.

From the Des Moines Register:

Wells' Dairy Inc. is falling short in the number of jobs it promised to create when it was awarded nearly $3 million in incentives, state economic development officials said.

The Iowa Department of Economic Development awarded the ice cream maker a $2.9 million forgivable loan in 2004 to help build a new corporate headquarters, which was completed in 2006. In exchange for the loan, Wells' Dairy agreed to create 129 high-paying jobs and retain 346 more by the middle of this year, for total of 475 jobs. The jobs had to have an average wage of $28.87.

The deadline to create those jobs is June 11, and the company isn't any closer to meeting that number, said Stephanie Bjornson, a state economic development department spokeswoman.

"It doesn't look like they've created any net jobs up to this point," she said earlier this week.

If Wells' Dairy doesn't meet that goal, the state will re-evaluate the situation and try to reach an agreement with the company based on the number of jobs that were created and retained.

"We're sending over a staff person next week to take a measurement," Bjornson said . "Then 30-60 days after that, we'll make the final determination based on the outcome and decide what the next steps will be."

Several years ago, the State of Iowa funded the Iowa Agricultural Finance Corp, which was supposed to be this venture capital-like fund exclusively for Iowa businesses that had ties to agricultural-related businesses. It should have been a hit, right? It has been a disaster. Take a look at this PDF and see what it "invested" in:

• Rudi's Organic Bakery. $13 million. Failed and moved to Colorado.
  
  
• Wildwood Harvest. $7.1 million. The company has never generated a profit.
  
  
• ProdiGene. $6 million. No employees in Iowa. "Struggled" and was fined by the USDA.
  
  
• Sioux-Preme Packing Company. $5 million. Profitable. Acquired in 2006 by Hilco Equity, a company out of Chicago, Illinois.
  
  
• Iowa Quality Beef. $3 million. Shut down in 2004 and 540 employees laid off.
  
  
• Ag Waste Recovery Systems. $150,000. No sales, no employees, and is considered an "idle corporation".
  

While it's bad that the State was just giving away corporate welfare, it's worse that they didn't have any provisions in the acceptance of the money that certain goals would be met. Now the State of Iowa is in a very difficult position to ask these companies for the money back. What's it going to take? A lawsuit? Guess who will be paying for that.