well Camden residents were promised they'd be hired for new jobs when the state awarded more than half a billion dollars in tax breaks roughly a decade ago for companies to move to the city but data now available to the public finds most of those companies only hired a handful of local residents and argument opponents made at the time when they contested the program and its pledge to Spur development in the state's poorest city Nancy Solomon is senior reporter for WNYC she's been following this program from the beginning and joins me now good to see you Nancy thanks so much for coming in so what was the intention of this program there's a lot of history behind it right and it's still ongoing I mean Statewide there's all sorts of tax breaks that are given out every year and this program existed before the the big jumbo breaks went to businesses that were willing to move to Camden so it's an ongoing program the idea is to incentivize businesses to either stay in the state or to come to the state and so and then in 2013 the program was revised to include these really jumbo tax breaks for a business that would move to Camden right so what did you find when you looked at the data about the number of Camden residents actually employed at what are some very large companies yeah it's a mixed result because there are a few companies that are the work that that they have is more blue-collar and so those companies have hired more Camden employees residents but it's uh it's pretty shocking I mean you've got Subaru with 10 employees the 76ers with 11 um you know Connor strong the George Norcross the party bosses insurance company I think has got six so these are other companies the gut hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks and you know and Camden residents protested these breaks when they were originally being awarded saying we're not going to get jobs at these places um and now the data is available that that they're not except in you know there are a few Cooper University Hospital got a tax break it was already there but it got a tax break and it employs Camden residents so there are exceptions well it wasn't part of the original deal as I recall and and I can remember reporting on that these companies weren't going to be held liable for or held responsible rather for hiring locals um and so what's sort of been done at the Grassroots level to make this more widely known well yeah I'm not sure about making it widely known I mean you're right they there was no requirement that they hire Camden residents and you know now the Grassroots activists fought to get this ordinance passed by the city that makes it public how many Camden residents are being hired um you know and the companies on the other hand will say and do say and have done that they have donated money to Camden Charities and organizations that do non-profits that provide job training they say they're good citizens I think the mayor of Camden would say it it is delivering that they're happy with all the development the offices some of the new buildings I think the residents would argue the the activists the community activists would say it hasn't delivered that it was a boondoggle that it was you know 1.6 billion dollars in state money that went to incentivized companies to move to Camden and yet people in Camden still have you know not a lot of job opportunities all right now C Solomon WNYC thanks so much thank you [Music]