The Colorado Economic Development Commission, in a rare move, on Wednesday rejected a request from a Greenwood Village company seeking $23.8 million in job growth incentive tax credits in return for hiring 1,418 health care workers in the metro area.
The unnamed company, which applied under the code name Project Anakin, provides pediatric home health care services in Colorado and employs about 325 nurses and therapists in the state.
Staff at the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade, who typically endorse most requests they vet, didn’t do so this time.
The company’s new private equity owners are considering Texas and Colorado for a rapid expansion, but Texas provides higher Medicaid reimbursement rates than Colorado.
Commissioners debated whether state incentives would be used to cover the gap in federal reimbursement rates and questioned to what degree the new hires would be local versus transplants.
“We are subsidizing the importation of more people into Colorado,” said board member Noel Ginsburg. “These jobs exist, the workers don’t.”
He suggested workforce training grants might be a better tool to help the company transition unemployed Coloradans into the home health care field.
Board member J.J. Ament said that by providing an award, the commission might end up determining winners and losers in an emerging field.
But board member Chuck Murphy described the struggles that his and other families face in finding adequate home health care for children and argued the company’s expansion would provide a much needed public benefit.
Commissioners eventually voted down a motion to approve the incentive request but asked the company to provide more detail on its business model and reapply.
Three companies did receive approval for incentives, including , a Houston provider of building automation and energy management systems. It can receive payroll tax incentives worth $411,054 if it chooses Adams County over Wyoming for the 50 jobs it has planned over the next eight years.
Project Support, the code name for an Indiana technology recruitment and staffing firm, won approval for $1.1 million if it brings 70 jobs for a division expansion to Denver instead of Phoenix.
Project Bear, the only one of the four applicants not looking to locate jobs to the metro area, won approval for $493,403 in incentives to bring 27 jobs to a new malt production plant in the San Luis Valley.
Although Colorado is famous for brewing beer, much of the state’s barley is sent to processing plants in other states and then .
While the request wasn’t huge, any new jobs in that part of Colorado would provide a significant economic boost, said Fiona Arnold, the state’s economic development chief.
Aldo Svaldi: 303-954-1410, asvaldi@denverpost.com or twitter.com/aldosvaldi
