State officials have terminated three more incentive packages worth millions of dollars and 1,000 potential new jobs.

At a meeting on Tuesday, officials from the North Carolina Department of Commerce’s Economic Investment Committee (NCEIC) cancelled packages for Clorox Services Company, Syneos Health, and Service Offsite Solutions because they couldn’t produce the jobs required to qualify for the Job Development Investment Grants (JDIG) that they were to receive.

Clorox, which employs over 500 people in the Triangle, mostly in Durham, was to receive a JDIG grant of over $2 million over twelve years in exchange for creating 158 new jobs. 

According to a November 2020 NC Department of Commerce press release, the company was to invest $7.5 million to relocate the headquarters for its Better Health Vitamins, Minerals and Supplement (VMS) business and expand its operations in Durham.

IT, management, marketing, sales, finance, and research and development personnel positions were to be created with an average salary of $123,310, which would have created an annual payroll impact of more than $19.4 million per year.

The company cited a change in strategy with its vitamins, minerals, and supplements business and remote work for the failure to create new jobs. They didn’t receive any funds through the grant program.

Syneos also blamed remote work for not producing the jobs required for the JDIG grant and market conditions. 

In 2016, the state agreed to give the company a grant of up to $8.4 million if it met the requirements of creating 550 jobs and the proposed $37.9 million expansion in Wake County. Syneos did qualify for two payments as part of the agreement and will be able to keep that money, because it met certain growth benchmarks, but requested termination of the agreement because it wouldn’t be able to meet future job targets.

Syneos employs over 2,000 at its Morrisville location.

Service Offsite Solutions planned to create 235 home construction jobs in Lee County as part of an $11 million incentives package but let the state know that another company had purchased it, and they cancelled plans for the expansion. 

They received no money through the grant program.

The three cancelations are the latest in a series of terminations by the state for the JDIG program, which doesn’t have a good track record when it comes to “promised job creation and investment targets.”

In January, Bandwidth, a Raleigh-based communications software company, had its JDIG agreement terminated by NCEIC for not following through on its required hiring goals as part of the agreement. 

Bandwidth notified the department in early January. The company said the withdrawal would give it greater flexibility for workplace planning.

It was announced in April 2020 that the company, which offers cloud-based software for voice, text messaging, and emergency services for clients like Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Zoom, and Uber, was to create 1,165 jobs with an average wage of over $96,800, creating an annual payroll of nearly $113 million in the state, as part of a $103.4 million expansion project.

In return, Bandwidth was to receive a JDIG award of up to $32.3 million in tax breaks over twelve years. The project was estimated to grow the state’s economy by over $2.7 billion.

The company did not receive any payments under the grant.

A growing number of recent agreement terminations have prompted calls to terminate the JDIG program.

Last July, Allstate had its JDIG agreement terminated after it failed to add thousands of jobs to its operations center in Charlotte. 

The insurance giant was set to receive a JDIG award of up to $17.8 million in tax breaks over the span of twelve years, but the state decided to end the 2017 agreement after the company’s pledge to add 2,250 jobs by 2020 didn’t come to fruition. At that time, Allstate had already employed 1,400 people.

Reports said that executives told NCEIC that the new COVID-19 pattern of remote work is to blame and incompatible with the grant rules. While most employees are remote, a little over 200 currently work at the Charlotte campus.

In August 2022, Centene Corporation, a provider of managed health care services, backed out of plans to move its east coast regional headquarters to Charlotte. Its $1 billion Charlotte campus was nearly complete after a year of construction.

In 2020, the Department of Commerce struck a deal with Centene, pulling $338 million in tax incentives through an add-on to the state’s JDIG. The JDIG program was originally designed to bring companies to poorer areas of the state, but Centene was awarded the first “transformational” JDIG grant to build its hub in urban Charlotte.

At the time, Centene said they abandoned the campus and the East Coast headquarters plan because of the shift to remote work.

Originally, Centene promised to bring more than 6,000 high-paying jobs to Charlotte over the 12 years, but that promise was later downgraded to 3,200 jobs.

Other notable terminations from the JDIG program include Advance Auto, Microsoft, Sonic Automotive, Conduent, and S&D Coffee.