Last month the Newport News Daily Press did an investigative series on four failed economic development projects in the Commonwealth. The companies had received incentives from the state, primarily grants from the Governor’s Opportunity Fund, to locate or expand. When the companies left town, the article alleged that the money had not been paid back.

Today Secretary of Commerce and Trade Michael Schewel was given the chance to respond on the op-ed page. He did a good job of placing the deals in context, performing damage control, and putting a positive spin on the Warner Administration’s efforts. Highlights:

To put it another way, over the 12-year period of Governor’s Opportunity Fund grants, only 2.7 percent of funds appear to have been spent without significant benefit to the state.

Since the inception of the GOF program in 1993, the state has collected $5.3 million from companies that failed to live up to the commitments they made when they received a Governor’s Opportunity Fund grant.

Of that amount, $5.17 million, or more than 97 percent of the total, has been collected since Warner took office in 2002.

We are in the process of collecting $1.8 million more.

Too bad this retort is appearing so late after the fact, although in “newspaper time” it isn’t so long. Imagine if Schewel had blogged some of his concerns with the story as soon as it appeared.

I talk a little about the superior immediacy of blogs in my Virgina Pundit Watch post on today’s Bacon’s Rebellion.