State Enterprise Zone Program Ended 31 December 2013

In a story not reported by Bay Area news outlets since early summer 2013, Enterprise Zones have been eliminated in the state of California per AB93 as signed by governor Jerry Brown. Here is San Jose satirist Eugenio Negro's advice column on the topic.
In San Jose the change is effective 31 December 2013 per sanjoseca.gov. This ends a host of financial and legal advantages, including tax breaks, that had pampered major corporations and helped them cover Californian towns with strip malls full of jobs on which workers can't survive.
Many critics of the program, from the State itself to labor unions, have pointed out the waste and expanding cost of the program over 30 years, as well as its practical failure to create new jobs. Obviously small business owners, to whom the program was supposedly advertised, could not compete even with tax breaks with large companies who had the funds to open more company stores that pay bottom wages.
Although many Californian towns with fragile economies remain dominated by corporate company stores that draw local funds off to corporate coffers, many of them out of state, the State will save as well as create funds with the zone program gone.