Companies close after receiving training grants
Last month, Transform Solar announced that it was closing and laying off about 250 people at its facility in Nampa. As StateImpact reported, the manufacturer of high-tech solar cells, had received $1.68 million in workforce training grants from the state of Idaho — money that the company will not have to pay back.
It’s not the first time that’s happened. Eleven companies that have received more than $5.3 million in training grants from the Idaho Department of Labor since 1996 no longer exist in the state. That’s according to data from the department and StateImpact’s analysis. Emilie Ritter Saunders/StateImpact Idaho
In the StateImpact Idaho story, Tim Komberec, of Empire Airlines here in Kootenai County, talks about the benefit of Idaho's workforce training grants, and points to his company as an example of how it's an incentive that works to create and retain jobs in the state.