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GREENSBORO — No company has received as much from Greensboro and Guilford County taxpayers as RF Micro Devices, the homegrown chip giant.

And now, it wants more money.

On Thursday, RF Micro will ask county commissioners for $1.03 million in economic-development incentives. The company, which makes chips for mobile phones, wants to spend $103 million on a microchip wafer plant and add 300 jobs.

Local taxpayers have seen this before. From 1996 to 2006, the city and county approved nine incentives packages for RF Micro totaling $9.1 million, more than any other company that's chosen to build here.

Now, commissioners must decide whether RF Micro deserves more help, and whether rejecting its request means losing hundreds of jobs to another area.

"We don't have a lot of companies come back over and over again every time they expand and grow," Democratic Commissioner Kirk Perkins said.

Company executives say they've earned the taxpayer help. With hefty tax payments on its buildings and high-tech chip-making equipment, RF Micro ranked No. 3 and No. 5 on lists of top city and county taxpayers for 2006. The company is among the county's largest employers, and 32 percent of its workers are minorities.

"Every time we create a job here, it creates additional jobs in the community," said Jerry Neal, who co-founded RF Micro in Greensboro in 1991.

Incentives have long stirred controversy among local officials and their constituents.

If this region doesn't use incentives, some other region will, supporters say, gaining a project that could have added jobs and boosted the tax base here. Opponents say incentives simply line the pockets of big businesses that have already picked a site and want to pad the bottom line.

But local incentives are not supposed to be handouts, the company notes. A company receives the money only when it constructs buildings, installs equipment or adds a certain number of jobs.

The county pays incentives in yearly installments, and this year's contribution to RF Micro is scheduled to be $626,000. That translates to an extra $3 in property taxes for the owner of a $200,000 home.

Now, the company wants county help again. Republican Commissioner Billy Yow, a longtime incentives critic, likened RF Micro to a "bad disease" that "can't be cured, and they won't stop coming back."

"It's a form of extortion," he said. "They're threatening us by saying if we don't do it, we're going to lose 'em."

Chairman Paul Gibson, a Democrat, says he probably won't vote for the company's request. Small companies, he said, really drive the economy.

"We don't recognize that," he said. "We only give incentives to the large, flashy, newsy kind of companies."

Neal sees the debate differently. With the help of city and county incentives, the company has about 2,000 local employees. And though it promised to spend $430 million on the previous Greensboro expansions, Neal says it always spends more.

"We have a fiduciary responsibility to our shareholders to get the best deal (for) the investment," he said.

That means looking at sites outside Greensboro. The company is considering locations in China, Durham and the United Kingdom, officials said in a presentation before the City Council. Forsyth County and High Point have also been considered.

The company is also seeking money from the state, bringing the total incentives package to about $7 million if the company builds in Greensboro, Neal said.

"If someone is offering us a better deal to put this facility," Neal said, "then we have to consider that."

Although the region smarts from job losses in textiles and furniture, business recruiters say companies such as RF Micro point to the future. The company recently announced that it will buy Colorado-based Sirenza Microdevices for $900 million in cash and stock, creating the world's largest radio frequency chip producer, RF Micro said.

"This is our new economy," said Dan Lynch, president of the Greensboro Economic Development Alliance. "Advanced manufacturing is where we're going and what we're focusing on."

The City Council unanimously approved $1.2 million for the project, but the company will encounter more opposition from the county commissioners. Even so, commissioners keep signing off on incentives for the company, eager to keep a local success story from building elsewhere.

"That's increasing our tax base," Democrat Carolyn Coleman said, "and certainly we're in need of that."

Contact Nate DeGraff at 373-7024 or ndegraff@news-record.com