Local Spending on Foxconn is a Statewide Problem

Much has been written and said about the Foxconn development project since it was first announced nearly three years ago. Industry experts were rightly suspicious of the promises Foxconn made, as well as the unprecedented incentives offered by the state to win what appeared to many as a project that was always too good to be true, famously first penned on the back of a napkin.

Three years later, the project is on hold. Whatever Foxconn does intend to build is twenty times smaller than what was contractually promised, and offers no hope of a supply chain that will ever result in 13,000 full time jobs.

While WEDC has tried to encourage Foxconn to sit down and adjust a contract which has clearly been broken, Mount Pleasant has continued to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to prepare land and infrastructure for a factory that is not happening.

Why didn’t they slow down when it was clear, years ago, that things were not going as planned?

Because, even while gripped by a delusion that everything was fine, they knew the hundreds of millions of dollars spent was guaranteed, in part, by the State of Wisconsin. Mount Pleasant is on target to spend nearly $1 billion, and the state will cover $400 million if Foxconn defaults.

The money Mount Pleasant has spent, and is still spending, is not just a local concern. Every taxpayer in the state should demand accountability for this failure in judgement and oversight.

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