RD475 - Effectiveness of Economic Development Incentive Grant Programs Administered by the Commonwealth of Virginia – November 9, 2016


Executive Summary:
In accordance with HB1191(*1), the Virginia Economic Development Partnership (VEDP) serves as the aggregator of data on seventeen different incentive programs across nine separate entities.(*2) This is the third annual report detailing summary information on economic development incentive programs administered by the Commonwealth of Virginia. The goal of this report is to provide data on incentive programs and relevant measures of program effectiveness in a transparent and easy-to-understand format.

In total, from FY2012 through FY2016, these seventeen incentive programs awarded $401,292,754 in incentive funds across 2,002 projects and $10,888,022 in investment funds across 162 projects. Communicating these results and understanding the goals of each program is critical to evaluating projects for success and programs for effectiveness.

The FY2016 report follows the format established in the FY2015 report. Ideas for improvements are detailed in the Next Steps and Recommendations and Actions and Goals sections. In addition to this report, the reporting agencies launched an interactive website ( http://www.virginiaincentives.org) to help people access the data on Virginia’s incentives.

This report shows the sustainability of the existing reporting process but more work remains for the Commonwealth to become the national leader in incentive management, assessment, and evaluation. Since the report captures data on eighteen unique incentive programs across nine entities, the creation of a Central Data Repository (CDR) is critical to accurately and effectively link and track individual projects which receive multiple incentives from multiple entities over multiple periods of time. Without a CDR, there is not an efficient and repeatable method for achieving this.
______________________________
(*1) For the purposes of this report, HB1191 is used interchangeably with Chapter 817 of the 2014 Acts of Assembly.
(*2) For the purposes of this report, an entity may be an agency, authority, or other unit that is authorized to use state funds