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Alabama Gets a VW Shrug Posted by Danny, on July 15th, 2008, at 4:20 pm
I wish VW could and would be forthright about what factors made the difference in the decision. Infrastructure? Quality of life issues? Was it simply that more than $200 million in incentives from Alabama was not enough? 3 comments to Alabama Gets a VW Shrug |
ChangeI wish my friend Hinton Mitchem godspeed and good luck after his retirement from public service. Hinton, on Monday, announced what many had suspected — he will not seek re-election. I remember meeting Hinton for the first time while I was a student at Auburn University. He served the people of his [...] Ten Minutes in the House, Senate Moves On Here is a quick preview of the upcoming week in Montgomery. This week will be a standard legislative schedule for the House. We will be in session on Tuesday and Thursday with committee meetings scheduled for Wednesday. Back in the Day... Union Avenue in Ozark in the 1920s |
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Tennessee is landing the Volkswagen plant that north Alabama hoped to get, 
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What the VW decision means is that we don’t pile millions more of debt on our grandkids to pay off. VW played Tennessee and Alabama like a fiddle on this one–and we went along. ADO says we offered them $120 million in cash. Would we cough up $120 million to work on our 40% high school dropout rate or to get more kids pre-school training?
There are 220,000 kids in rural public schools in Alabama. 60% of them are on free-reduced lunches. 10 years ago, 53% of them were free-reduced. So while we pat ourselves on the back about all our “mega projects” coming to Alabama, are we really enjoying a rising tide?
No, we’re not “enjoying a rising tide.” The folks who actually get the jobs at Mercedes, or Kia or who will get those jobs at TK are or will do very well financially. But for thousands of Alabmians, all they can do is stand on the sidelines and watch. Alabama’s median household income has been flat or actually declined during the past five years at the same time that we’ve had unparalleled economic wins. It merely raises the question – who benefits from the millions of dollars we invest in such projects?
We’ll probably never know exactly why VW picked Chattanooga, but that won’t stop the opinion makers from using it to advance their point.