The Sacramento Business Journal ran the following Op-ed piece last Friday.  The writer is Enita Elphick, business owner of Unity Forest Products.  Again, the business world is speaking out in favor of the EZ programs against the backdrop of dueling statistics about the program’s effectiveness.

This is no time to be ending the state’s enterprise zone program

California’s enterprise zone program is one of the state’s most important economic development tools.  The program was created in 1984 in order to stimulate business and create jobs in depressed areas with low incomes and high unemployment. The goal is to entice businesses to set up shop, hire locally and hire people with barriers to employment — and revive the local economy by providing companies with tax incentives and other benefits.

Surprisingly, there are some legislators in Sacramento looking to end the enterprise zone program, threatening to stop what little job creation is taking place. This makes no sense. Over the past 25 years, enterprise zones have proven to be beneficial to California’s economy and employment rate.

The program is beneficial to California as a whole. The California Association of Enterprise Zones website reports that “zones account for nearly 30,000 jobs generated over a 10-year period, and that growth brought funds to the state through income tax, sales tax and corporate tax.”

Similarly, as individuals are hired, their dependence on social services decreases.

As owner of Unity Forest Products, an organization that has planted its roots within one of California’s 42 enterprise zones, I can say that our organization would not be here today if it weren’t for the program. The current economic hardships so many of us are facing make it extremely difficult to do business, especially in California. If the program did not extend benefits to our company, we would not have been able to continuously expand while increasing our work force and remain viable during these tough economic times.

Unity Forest Products was a startup in 1988, and without the hiring tax credits and other incentives the enterprise zone offers, I would not have been able to obtain the loans necessary to start the business. Additionally, we began with four employees, but because of what the enterprise zone allowed us to accomplish, by 2008 we had over 120 employees.

From a job creation point of view, comparing all of the job programs at the federal or state level, the enterprise zone program is by far the most productive. In addition, it paves the way for business growth in disadvantaged communities.

The enterprise zone program is one of the few remaining programs that make sense. If the legislature comes back from summer recess and votes to end the enterprise zone program, it would be devastating for our business, the employees who rely on us for their livelihood and the economic forecast for the state.