NJ.com: Mulshine – Under Governor Phil Murphy, the state of the state is heading south

by Paul Mulshine

If you were watching the NCAA football championship game Monday night as I was, you might have noticed a highlight reel of the star quarterback, Louisiana State’s Joe Burrow, starring in the semifinal game two weeks earlier at Mercedes-Benz Stadium.

I found myself wondering where that stadium is. Didn’t Mercedes-Benz have its corporate center in Montvale?

Not anymore. The corporate center, and that stadium, are in Atlanta. In 2015, the world’s most prestigious automaker left the Garden State for the Peach State. Here’s how the Star-Ledger described the move:

“Mercedes is expected to achieve an annual operational savings of more than 20 percent with the departure from Bergen County.” The reason? “A combination of lower costs, business-friendly incentives, and transportation networks,” the article stated.

I kept that in mind as I drove to Trenton to catch Gov. Phil Murphy’s State of the State address. Murphy loves to tell us that if we only expand services then businesses will locate here because they recognize “value for money,” as he puts it.

But if we can’t even hold on to a high-end employer like Mercedes, then how will we lure more businesses to locate here?

Read the full column here.