Who knows when the first city officials offered incentives to private companies to invest big bucks in their burgs?

Gillette, Wyoming is a small city on the swelling high plains. Devil’s Tower is not far away and Mount Rushmore is an easy drive into South Dakota. Looking at the barren map around Gillette, you might wonder why the town was located in that particular spot. It turns out Gillette was a railroad guy who built a train crossing at that location. The town sprung up around it and local leaders named it “Gillette” in his honor.

Indianapolis already had a name so it’s not likely that it will change to “Simonapolis” anytime soon. However, the Indianapolis Business Journal reports this week that the city has given the Simon Property Group a lot of reasons – more than 400 million of them – to keep build the Circle Center Mall and keep the headquarters of the company’s nationwide operation downtown. Tax abatements and fees to run Conseco Fieldhouse, home of the Indiana Pacers, the NBA team owned by Mel and Herb Simon, are part of the package.

No one suggests for a minute that downtown is not better for those and other developments. This city was once known as “Indiana-no-place.” Now it’s someplace where people visit and spend money. Sports venues, Circle Center, and museums located within an easy walk are part of the lure. The money visitors and nearby residents spend downtown is more than the city allows the Simons. And the Simons are only the most identifiable recipients of our generosity.

It’s healthy to talk about how much is too much, particularly when the public (that is me and you – if you live in central Indiana) will be asked to pony up more for running Conseco Fieldhouse and Lucas Oil Stadium (which is not part of the Simon portfolio).

Most politicians will tell you privately that they hate giving up tax incentives that someone else must pay – or that future generations must make up – to land office buildings, entertainment and shopping complexes and manufacturing plants. But letting those operations escape to other cities is not an attractive option.

This has been going on for decades, and perhaps centuries. Maybe some mayor of a dusty town along a dirt road gave free whiskey and a hotel room to the owner of a stagecoach company if he had the coach stop and change horses there. And then perhaps the town became a good-sized city on US 40.

Do you think the emperor Vespasian gave up a bundle in 70 A.D. to get the Coliseum built in downtown Rome instead of distant Milan? Without luxury boxes!

Anyone would say that there is more to do in downtown Indianapolis now than in the early 70s. Rome is probably better off now than in the first 50 years A.D. But it did have that big empire back then.