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I want to help PayPal find a suitable place of service
Paul Stam, Guest Column
April 19, 2016
3 MIN READ TIME

I want to help PayPal find a suitable place of service

I want to help PayPal find a suitable place of service
Paul Stam, Guest Column
April 19, 2016

Since the North Carolina General Assembly responded to the Charlotte City Council’s unpopular bathroom ordinance by approving House Bill 2 (HB2) and Gov. Pat McCrory signed the bill March 27, a national smear campaign has lobbied businesses and individuals to shun the state. Many businesses have acted irresponsibly and even irrationally to show disapproval of N.C.’s alleged statement of “hate” against the LGBTQ community. One of the most hypocritical actions was PayPal’s reversal of its intention to build an operations center in Charlotte.

We believe our readers need to read Rep. Paul Stam’s response to PayPal’s intimidation. Paul B. “Skip” Stam Jr. has served the North Carolina General Assembly as a Republican since 2003. He is an attorney and the current House Speaker Pro Tem. Stam is a member of First Baptist Church, Apex.
– The Editor

On March 16, PayPal announced that it would gladly receive $3.6 million from the state of North Carolina to locate a new facility near Charlotte. Then on April 5, PayPal President & CEO, Dan Schulman, announced that it would not move to North Carolina because of the passage of SL 2016-3 (also known as HB2). Certainly, this was not because of the bathroom/locker-room situation since the bill did not even apply to private business facilities.

PayPal was incensed at the so-called failure of the legislation to include extra special protections for sexual orientation, gender expression and gender identity. PayPal lawyers apparently did not realize that this was the same law in effect on March 16.

PayPal currently maintains its operations center and main office in Nebraska and has a technology center in Arizona as well as a data service office in Texas – all states with similar discrimination policies as North Carolina.

The problem for PayPal is that 31 other states (and the federal government) also lack those categories for extra special protection.

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So PayPal would be limited to 20 states: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Oregon, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin.

But PayPal will need to narrow its list further.

In the publication Rich States Poor States (alec.org/publication/rich-states-poor-states) and the publication by the National Tax Foundation on Tax policy (taxfoundation.org/article/2016-state-business-tax-climate-index) the following states are in the bottom 15 in economic or tax climate. PayPal would certainly want to avoid these states.

See list of worst states for fostering business developments in box at right.

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Now PayPal is down to only five states: Colorado, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico and Utah.

But PayPal has another problem: It does business in 25 nations where homosexual acts are a crime, according to a release from Congressman Robert Pittenger’s office dated April 6.

So it would certainly want to reduce its footprint there. It would also want to stop its plans to expand to Cuba and would want to eliminate its operations in the People’s Republic of China. Each have brutal communist dictatorships.

Hopefully this research will be helpful to PayPal in its search for a new location more compatible with its principles.