Long after Apple picks Texas, NC officials silent on recruitment efforts

Apple, one of the world's richest and most profitable corporations, announced on Dec. 13 that it would locate a major new facility in Austin, Texas, for millions in state and local incentives, beating out other competitors for the project.

Such expansions and relocations – and the jobs they could potentially bring to communities – are the target of aggressive campaigns by state and local officials across the country. In North Carolina, state law requires agencies to release at least some records of those recruitment attempts when companies decide to go somewhere else.

But state officials maintain that, despite Apple's announcement, they're still actively recruiting the tech firm to North Carolina in an effort code named "Project Bear." Wake County and state Department of Commerce officials say their ongoing recruitment activities allow them, by law, to withhold records from disclosure.

And withhold, they have.

In response to multiple requests from WRAL News – some shortly after the announcement and others over the past six months – both Wake County and Commerce Department officials have repeatedly declined to provide a single page of records detailing just how much public money and other taxpayer-funded perks state and local officials offered Apple to select the Tar Heel State.

Officials at the Commerce Department and the office of Gov. Roy Cooper, who oversees the agency, have so far refused to explain their reasoning for the secrecy – secrecy some experts say doesn't stand up to legal scrutiny.

"The spirit of the law in this particular provision is that, once the facts clearly indicate that business has made a determination, it's no longer up for debate," said Brooks Fuller, a professor of media law at Elon University and director of the North Carolina Open Government Coalition. "The mechanism has been triggered for the disclosure of the information."

While not billed as a second headquarters like a similar expansion announced by Amazon around the same time, the new Apple campus promised up to 15,000 high-paying technology jobs and $1 billion in investment.

That means state officials can now dangle incentives worth millions to some private companies, which can recoup nearly every penny of their new employees' North Carolina income tax withholdings for up to four decades if they continue to meet hiring and investment targets.

But signs did point toward some sort of activity by the company in North Carolina in December – even after Apple made its announcement about Austin.

Wake County spokeswoman Dara Demi told WRAL News that Commerce Department officials still consider the effort an "active" recruitment project, exempting its details from disclosure even six months after Apple's Austin campus announcement.

"Wake County is not the lead entity in the recruitment of Project Bear. The State of North Carolina has instructed us that the recruitment is still an active project," Demi said in a statement. "The release of any confidential information at this time could harm negotiations between the company and the state."

She responded to follow-up questions by repeating the statement.

The law does say that, once an agency or company makes an announcement about locating in the state "or the business has made a final decision not to do so," the records should be released within 25 days.

"After the state declares Project Bear an inactive project, Wake County will release the requested information immediately," Demi said in the statement.

Commerce spokesman David Rhoades declined to elaborate this week on the status of the project, saying in a statement that the release of records "would frustrate the purpose for which they were created."

"We are not aware that the business has made a final decision regarding a potential expansion in North Carolina, and the project remains active," Rhoades said in an emailed statement.

He said the agency did not consider Apple's Austin announcement to be the "final decision" specified in state law. The second campus planned for Austin, he said, was separate from the state's ongoing, "active" recruitment of Apple.

He did not respond to a request for clarification Wednesday and declined to make anyone at the Commerce Department available for an interview.

Cooper spokesman Ford Porter also declined a request for an interview, instead providing an emailed statement that the governor "will continue to work to bring new jobs to North Carolina."

He referred any additional questions to Commerce Department officials.

Fuller said he's concerned that North Carolina's stance is part of a trend he's seen with public records requests here and in other states, where government agencies use exemptions "seemingly in perpetuity, even when the facts dictate otherwise."

"What it seems to suggest is that the state can just paint this gloss of 'ongoing economic business interests,' and they don't have to answer to anybody," he said. "To completely leave that out of public discussion sets a pretty dangerous precedent."

If Apple is potentially headed to North Carolina in some capacity, Fuller said, there are strong arguments that records related to a separate expansion effort can remain exempt from disclosure. But he believes failure to release details on the state's quest for the company's second campus – which WRAL News specifically referenced in its request – is a violation of state law.

"Unequivocally, any record related to that particular project is subject to disclosure," Fuller said.

Officials with the Commerce Department, as well as Wake County, routinely release similar records after the failure or success of a project.

Wake dangled $100M-plus in Amazon tax breaks

Without such records, Fuller said, residents are deprived of fundamental knowledge about how their tax dollars are spent by elected and appointed officials.

"It robs the public of core information related to what their government is up to," Fuller said. "Explaining to the public what the government is up to is the whole reason we have freedom of information laws in the first place."

That's why Joe Coletti, a senior fellow at the conservative John Locke Foundation who follows tax incentives in the state, said he would expect more of an explanation from public officials, given that Apple announced its plans to expand back in January 2018.

"This is either blind hope, or it's just a stalling process," Coletti said. "If it's blind hope, they have to have something to indicate there's a realistic prospect of it."

In that case, he said, state officials should have at least some information to release to the public.