Virginia Spends on Jobs While Cutting Services

Cash-strapped Virginia is giving millions of dollars in outright grants and tax breaks to corporations that bring in jobs even as the state cuts education spending and delays payments to its workers’ pension fund, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Officials point to the 55,000 new jobs created in Virginia from February to October - the country’s third-highest job-creation rate in that span - as proof the program is working.

Northrop Grumman Corp. received $13 million in April to relocate its corporate headquarters from Los Angeles, a move expected to create 300 jobs in Virginia. Microsoft received $2.1 million in August for a planned new data center in Virginia that will create 50 jobs.

Republican Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling (pictured), the state’s point person on job creation, defended cutting services to pay for economic development, saying, “We are not going to be able to address any of these other needs until we get the economy going.”