Once again, Bath Iron Works is seeking financial assistance from taxpayers to assure its competitiveness.

Why should one of the largest businesses in the state need such publicly financed support?

BIW’s original Tax Increment Financing, enabling the Land Level Transfer Facility with its dry dock, was granted because it was believed that, without such public funding, BIW would simply go elsewhere, taking a substantial tax base and its jobs with it. That was the perceived risk in asking a subsidiary of General Dynamics to fund its own project entirely.

However, in its application to the Department of Environmental Protection and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, public records show BIW argued that local site approval for the project was a dire matter of continued survival of the company, as it couldn’t relocate elsewhere; it simply wasn’t feasible for a number of submitted and documented reasons.

BIW’s survival was dependent on staying put. That was its assertion to those parties that had no purview over any financial issues involved.

This seemingly contradictory argument did not arise in those BIW presentations seeking public assistance in remaining the state’s largest private employer. In the end, BIW’s corporate strategy proved a winning hand, and its stated objective to gain competitiveness by modernizing, and thereby cutting one third of its work force, succeeded.

Once again, BIW is requesting TIF assistance. Once again, there is no promise of increased long-term employment, only enhanced corporate success.

And, once again, increased tax assessment will occur however the capital improvement is financed, privately or publicly. Once again, this is not about necessity, but rather about accommodation through intimidation.

Tax Increment Financing was meant to provide economic development in areas where such improvement of the tax base would otherwise not occur. It is public financing of economic development using the promise of future tax gains to create investment conditions for such eventual gain. It was designed to assist underdeveloped or distressed areas lacking prosperity and options.

Even without adhering to such original intent, why should BIW now, again, be granted its request for continued taxpayer financing for its own capital improvements?

Not knowing of the disparity between BIW’s presentations to the public vs. those to state and federal agencies at the time of the Land Level Transfer Facility project, perhaps fear of losing BIW’s economic impact to Bath, and the entire state, warranted approval of such corporate subsidy, needed or not.

To approve continued public financing now, though, one would have to again believe that, without it, BIW would somehow be unable to find such investment support elsewhere, or would choose not to survive by purely capitalistic means, or would somehow up and leave.

Assuming its Land Level Transfer Facility site analysis still stands, BIW will not be moving from its present location — for the same reasons it stated it couldn’t at that time.

One would also have to believe that such a powerful business entity has found itself in such a precarious position that, without Bath’s TIF approval, approval by a handful of elected officials or by the vagaries of public referendum, it would somehow flounder with dwindling future revenues to the public coffers.

Given BIW’s proven business and political acumen, I think not. I think they will do whatever is necessary to prosper here in Bath and have ready and calculated fall back positions to achieve that goal.

When asked how BIW was sure that the Land Level Transfer Facility concept would succeed, technologically and financially, the company’s reply back then was simple: “Because failure is not an option.”

BIW’s request for TIF assistance is only that, an option of low-hanging and available fruit. It makes business sense, but is hard to believe that it is a game changer in BIW’s survival or growth.

I am all for corporate welfare as long as they fare well, as they obviously can, on their own. I also observe that L.L Bean is currently proposing a capital expansion of its own, yet it doesn’t come to the public asking for help in reducing its investment liabilities.

GARY ANDERSON was a community liaison between Bath’s south end and Bath Iron Works during BIW’s Land Level Transfer Facility expansion.