The Charlotte Observer and may not be republished without permission. It's one thing if timber companies want to grind up their forest resources for chipboard or paper. But it's quite another for North Carolina taxpayers to subsidize the process with a handsome tax credit for timber companies that export the chips through state ports. It ought to stop, now. And if the state House of Representatives had stuck by its guns, that tax credit would have expired in early 1998.
Taxpayers ought to let their state representatives and senators know what they think of it.
The answer is they don't. But supporters of the chip exporters argue that the tax credits strengthen North Carolina's state ports at Wilmington and Morehead City. Those ports traditionally have trailed the amount of shipping done in the nearby ports of Charleston in South Carolina and Norfolk in Virginia. The growth of wood chip exports from the N.C. ports helps the bottom line at Wilmington and Morehead City. But the state has rushed to subsidize an industry that it doesn't fully understand.