Accountability has been a signature theme in the LePage administration over the past five years. Gov. Paul LePage and his supporters, including former state treasurer, U.S. Rep. Bruce Poliquin, R-2nd District, have rooted out what they term “wasteful and reckless spending” in several state agencies — the Maine Turnpike Authority, Maine State Housing Authority and the Maine Municipal Bond Bank, to name three.

The welfare system is also a frequent target of administration “muckrakers,” who have geared up for the welfare fraud battle with nine new investigators since 2011 and a fraud hotline for the public.

What are some results? Nearly $500,000 was recouped in the turnpike authority fiasco. The state housing authority may be building cheaper housing now but auditors did not find the agency was spending funds fraudulently. And there have been no more $4,000 bond bank dinners in New York after bond closings.

Welfare fraud, considered rampant, barely rises above 1 percent of welfare spending, although prosecutions are rising. A more important result is a new ethic in Augusta that waste, fraud and inefficiency in any area of state government will not be tolerated.

Why then are we ignoring a huge area of state spending that many consider wasteful, inefficient and certainly low on accountability? I’m referring to tax credits and exemptions (known as tax expenditures) aimed at economic development. Fraud investigations reap chump change in comparison to the potential waste contained in the $500 million in annual tax breaks for businesses estimated by the Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting. These are often seen as tax cuts but actually are spending programs to induce job creation.

The impact on the state budget for all of this forgone revenue is huge and is poorly scrutinized. I was a member of the Joint Committee for Appropriations and Financial Affairs when I served in the Legislature. We combed through page after page of the budget in agonizing detail to find savings and contain costs. However, when the Legislature’s Taxation Committee presented the report of Tax Expenditures, little discussion ensued, despite the millions of dollars represented on the page.

Questioning job creation incentives under the State House dome is seen as the third rail — no one wants to be labeled “anti-business.” But a more business-like approach is needed, says the watchdog Office of Program Evaluation and Government Accountability. In its 2006 report on economic development programs, OPEGA suggests that these programs “constitute an investment portfolio that ideally should be designed and managed to assure that the state is getting the best return on investment.”

Ahh, there’s the rub. How do we do that when OPEGA says that data for “performance evaluation and accountability are still lacking”? There’s that accountability word again. We invest millions of dollars in economic development and collect incomplete data on outcomes.

The state does evaluate these programs periodically. OPEGA’s report in 2006 cited many shortfalls in program controls and oversight. A rosier 2009 report on a select number of incentive programs declared that 3,602 jobs were created and 13,090 retained. A 2010 report on then-Gov. John Baldacci’s Pine Tree Zones found that state economists could not attribute job creation to the zones’ incentives. A 2014 report was even more direct: Pine Tree Zones do not perform well in cost-benefit analyses. The report also affirmed that programs still lack accountability.

The takeaway is that tax incentives are very costly for taxpayers with questionable results. And now the failed Great Northern Paper deal rears its head again. Mill owner Cate Street Capital used a tax credit program to supposedly invest $40 million into mill improvements but instead directed the funds into paying off debts, broker fees and one-day loans. The result: the mill is shuttered and the state owes investors $16 million in tax credits.

The Legislature and the governor were hoodwinked, as Eliot Cutler pointed out repeatedly during the campaign season. Once again, lack of controls and accountability have come back to bite us. LePage now says a deal is a deal and we have to pay it. He didn’t feel that way about undermining the Statoil deal or holding up voter-approved conservation bonds, jeopardizing several public-private land deals.

If this were anything but a business-related program, the governor would be calling it fraud. Will he withhold funds to Cates as he has in other disagreements? How about a clawback of funds for broken promises?

LePage struck a chord with the public with his campaign for accountability. Both he and the Legislature now must demand greater performance from our investments in tax breaks. The public expects better.

Lisa Miller, of Somerville, is a former legislator who served on the Health and Human Services and Appropriations and Financial Affairs committees.

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