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State auditor tells Appropriations Committee that reported ROI and program outcomes may be misleading
Summary
State Auditor Doug told the House Appropriations Committee on April 7 that several economic-development and state outcome metrics—most notably a reported $43-to-$1 return for the VEGGIE incentive program—appear overstated, citing limited validation, inconsistent background-growth assumptions and gaps in agency data practices. He said his office will release a related audit in a few weeks.
State Auditor Doug told the House Appropriations Committee on April 7, 2026, that state reports on economic-development incentives and several other programs rely on assumptions and applicant-reported figures that can make outcomes look better than the underlying evidence supports.
Doug said the state’s outcomes reporting contains striking numbers—most prominently a claim that every dollar awarded by the VEGGIE incentive program produced $43 in economic activity—which he described as implausible without stronger validation and better measures of causality. "That makes the 43-to-1 return on investment number crazy," he said, adding that the published figure conflates capital investment with fiscal return and does not account for background growth that would have occurred independent of the incentive.
The auditor said the historical cost-benefit model uses an industry-average background growth rate; his office tested…
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