State, county consider subsidies, tax break for Pfizer
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
November 13, 2009
By Virginia Young
Missouri and St. Louis County officials are studying whether Pfizer Inc. must repay state subsidies and whether it will continue to receive property tax abatement for a building on its Chesterfield campus.
On Monday, Pfizer said it was cutting 600 of its 1,000 jobs here and was selling the sprawling research center to Monsanto Co.
The state gave Pfizer $2 million over the last three years to retrain 1,000 workers. The county provided 10 years of abatement of half the property taxes on the building. Under the state program, a company teams with a community college to update workers' skills.
A "clawback" provision allows the state to seek repayment of the money if the company eliminates any of the jobs for which training assistance was received. The jobs must be retained for five years from the project's approval date, or until 2011 in Pfizer's case.
John Fougere, spokesman for the Department of Economic Development, said Thursday the state will "take a look at whether the laid-off occupations are included in the job retention training project.
"We are currently gathering data to determine if the clawback provision was violated, and will be making a decision once we make a determination," he said.
The state also approved $2.5 million in Quality Jobs subsidies for Pfizer in 2005, based on its promise to retain 1,000 jobs. But the company never followed through with an application for those tax credits, so they were never issued.
St. Louis County officials are considering canceling the remainder of $6.7 million in property tax abatement to Pfizer.
The abatement, granted by the County Council in 2007, has eight years remaining.
Dennis Coleman, president and chief executive officer of the St. Louis County Economic Council, on Thursday said officials will meet soon with Pfizer.
"We're concentrating on due diligence on the abatement issue," he said.
The abatement covered a biologics building that Pfizer opened last spring. The company fulfilled an investment promise, putting $350 million into the campus -- considerably more than promised, Coleman said. It also kept its word on generating construction jobs, he said.
The county, which is tax-exempt, became owner of the biologics building to establish the tax abatement. Pfizer bought $245 million in bonds for the building and was paying them off. The county "has absolutely no financial responsibility" to retire the bonds, Coleman said.
The county will not attempt to make Pfizer repay the two years of abatement it has received. In that time, the company maintained its commitment of 1,000 jobs, officials said.
Ed Bryant, a spokesman for Pfizer, said the company "would fully meet its legal obligations."
