Drew Wilson
Gov. Rick Scott announced Wednesday that a logistics company will expand operations in Dania Beach, adding 60 jobs and investing about $600,000 in the area.
Total Quality Logistics already has made a couple of expansion announcements in 2015. The company said it would add 100 jobs in Daytona Beach in early October, and in May TQL committed to a 200-job expansion in Tampa.
TQL’s expansion is part of an economic incentives deal. Exact details of what the freight shipping company will paid for the new jobs has not been disclosed though the new expansion will likely fit the same mold as the four other expansion deals between TQL and the state.
The other four deals would pay TQL about $1.3 million in incentives for adding a combined 431 jobs in Duval, Hillsborough, Miami-Dade and Volusia counties. Those incentives will come to the company as $3,000 tax credits for each job added with a wage higher than the area’s average. According to Department of Economic Opportunity records, TQL has added 89 of those jobs and received about $61,000 in incentives payments.
Scott also used the expansion announcement to push for higher incentives funding from the Legislature. His plan calls for $250 million, or three years of funding, in one lump sum as well as changes to how deals are approved. Under the plan, the governor, senate President and house Speaker would have to approve any deal costing the state $1 million or more.
The plan was presented to the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Tourism and Economic Development on Tuesday and was met with skepticism from committee members. After the committee meeting, conservative group Americans for Prosperity came out against the plan, blasting it for a lack of transparency and for being “risky.”
