Dean Minardi: Lower taxes will draw clean industry, new jobs
The best way out of Florida’s economic woes is to grow our economy by putting Floridians to work. That’s why the Florida Legislature should find a way to adopt Gov. Rick Scott’s proposed corporate income tax rollback, despite the challenges legislators face in balancing Florida’s budget.
For any company, the simple truth is the more income it can earn, the more people it can hire. And the more people it can hire, the faster it can grow. This is the factor that sealed Bing Energy, Inc.’s decision to relocate our corporate headquarters from Chino, California, and set up our first production facility in Tallahassee, Florida. As the chief financial officer of Bing Energy, I personally crunched the numbers, and it was clear: Moving our business to Florida was a financially smart decision.
We are impressed by the value Florida places on its high-tech manufacturers and the commitment Florida is making to foster a pro-employer, pro-job creation environment.
Bing Energy was aggressively courted by several other states that had higher upfront financial incentives, but the tipping point in our decision to move to Florida was Governor Scott’s plan to eliminate the corporate income tax. Governor Scott would spur job growth by reducing the business tax from 5.5 percent to 3 percent in the 2011-2012 Fiscal Year and phase it out completely by 2018.
We intend to be an important job creator for Florida, and a reduction in the amount we have to pay government will get us there faster. Florida is a natural base of operations for us, since we are bringing to market technology pioneered by FSU professors Drs. Jim Zheng and Ben Wang to create a new generation of hydrogen fuel cells that are less expensive, smaller, lighter and more durable than any other on the market. This technology will lead to a fuel cell that, for the first time, is commercially viable for mass-market use. Bing Energy’s fuel cells have the potential to transform both transportation and distributed power generation, and it will happen right here in Florida.
Bing Energy’s move to Florida means high-paying jobs for residents and it means building a high-tech energy sector in the Florida Panhandle—all the while providing a clean and renewable energy solution for the world. In the past few weeks, Bing Energy has hired its first employees for our production facility in Tallahassee. And many more jobs are yet to come.
Bing Energy believes the third industrial revolution—energy use and distribution—is upon us. If the Legislature embraces and implements the vision Gov. Scott has laid out, we wholly believe Tallahassee can be the “Silicon Valley” for clean energy and Florida can reinvent and restart its economy.
Dean Minardi is the chief financial officer of Bing Energy, Inc., a manufacturer of state-of-the-art components for polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells, located in Tallahassee, Fla.
