Mahoning County is holding off for a few weeks the decision to add to the county bed tax in order to fund economic development at the airport.

As the heated debate heads toward a two-county summit, with the Chamber also sitting in, Commissioner Rimedio Righetti cautioned Friday in The Vindy that http://www.vindy.com/news/2012/mar/23/two-county-summit-set-on-need-for-bed-ta/">funding economic development is vital.

Here’s some history, boss: We do fund economic development.

http://www.vindy.com/news/2010/aug/08/some-dispute-claims-of-widespread-job-gr/">Here’s a story we wrote in 2010.

In the story, the figure $1 million is used. That’s a very low, conservative definition.

A news hawk sent us a report a few years ago that added up the alphabet soup of agencies — city, county, regional -- that claim economic development impact on the Valley. And the real dollars are far more than $1 million. That’s just vending machine money.

So we do spend plenty on economic development already.

Before spending more with more bed tax dollars, how good are we spending the current money now?