Tennessee to Give Ford Electric Truck Supplier $13 Million in Incentives

Tennessee has committed to give $13 million in incentives to a supplier for Ford’s new electric truck factory at BlueOval City.

Magna Seating will receive $3 million for its factory at BlueOval City while the companies Cosma International factory at the site in Haywood County will receive $7.5 million. A third manufacturing facility in Lawrence County will receive $2.5 million.

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Battery Company Plans New Georgia IT Hub, but Incentives Unknown

A battery company plans to spend $19 million on a new regional IT hub facility in north Fulton County, but it’s unclear whether Georgia taxpayers are on the hook for any incentives.

SK Battery America expects to create 200 high-tech jobs at an integrated IT management center on Sanctuary Parkway in Roswell. It will serve the company’s battery manufacturing facilities in Georgia and the country.

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Tennessee Touts 2022 Economic Developments: 16,000 Job Commitments, $8.6 Billion in Private Investments

Governor Bill Lee and the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development (TNECD) posted their picks for the top five new business investments in the state during 2022. 

In all, about 100 projects were supported by TNECD statewide in 2022, resulting in more than 16,000 jobs and $8.6 billion in private investment, according to the department.

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Ohio’s Capital Budget Riddled with Incentives, Pork Projects

Working late into the night this week, the Ohio General Assembly passed its traditional capital budget, spending billions on statewide initiatives, business and industry incentives and pet projects for lawmakers.

House Bill 687 included money for state parks and the incentives for Intel’s planned $20 billion investment in two chip-making plants in central Ohio. Gov. Mike DeWine called the bill an historic investment.

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Phoenix Police Forced to Transfer Specialty Officers to Patrol to Deal With Shortage

The Phoenix Police Department (PPD) announced on Wednesday that around 100 officers and detectives from specialty divisions such as Violent Crimes are being transferred to patrol units due to a severe lack of officers on the streets and handling 911 calls. Their goal is to get the number of officers on patrol duty back up over 1,000. 

The PPD acknowledged officer attrition reached an “unprecedented” rate in early 2021. “These trends indicated the loss rate would become critical due to insufficient hiring and increased employee separations,” Phoenix Police Department Chief Jeri L. Williams said in the plan. 

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State Sen. Gardenhire Wants to Create Incentives for Grocery Stores to Open in Urban Areas, So Called ‘Food Deserts’

  State Sen. Todd Gardenhire (R-TN-10) wants to boost inner-city and rural access to fresh food to fight “food deserts,” The Chattanoogan reports. Gardenhire made the announcement Monday to the Hamilton Place Rotary Club. The Hamilton County senator said he wants to provide incentives for grocery stores to open in the inner-city. The senator made reference to a Tennessee Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations report from January that found 21 percent of Tennesseans live in an area considered to be a food desert. Fifteen percent live in an urban food desert, while 6 percent live in rural food deserts. The TACIR report is available here. Residents in “food deserts,” or areas with lowered access to healthy food, “tend to have a less nutritious diet and poorer health outcomes than those living in other communities,” the report says. Also, according to the report: While not always limited to food deserts, a variety of policy alternatives have been implemented in states and communities around the US to both improve access to and encourage the consumption of healthy food, including improving transportation to and from healthy food retailers, bringing the food to the customer through mobile markets or food delivery, providing vouchers for…

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Amazon’s $100 Million-Plus Tennessee Tax Incentives Deal ‘Unfair and Immoral,’ Beacon Center Says

The State of Tennessee’s and Metro Nashville’s $102 million taxpayer gift to Amazon is not a Prime deal, a public watchdog organization says. Amazon turned down Nashville for its coveted two new headquarters sites, called HQ2, but Nashville landed a $230 million operations center near downtown in the future Nashville Yards. For more on Amazon’s Nashville announcement, see this story in The Tennessee Star. Mark Cunningham, vice president of communications and outreach at the Beacon Center of Tennessee, criticized the deal. The center is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to providing empirical research and free market solutions for Tennesseans. Cunningham said, “Nashville was passed over for Amazon’s second (and third) headquarters, yet city and state officials still got scammed into giving the company more than $100 million in taxpayer giveaways for a consolation prize, which includes $80 million in cash handouts. Amazon, one of the world’s most valuable companies, and the government played taxpayers with this incentive deal, and it is time for us to speak up against this type of corporate welfare. While we welcome new businesses and the jobs they create to our state, forcing middle-class Tennesseans and small businesses to give their hard-earned dollars to a multi-billion dollar business is both unfair and immoral.” Rick Manning,…

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Tennessee Loses Money Spending $17,500 Per Job to Lure 1,000 AllianceBernstein Employees to Nashville from New York City

Tennessee Capital building

A $17.5 million tax incentive from the state of Tennessee to lure 1,000 jobs to Nashville–$17,500 per job—came at the expense of taxpayers to lure well-paid corporate executives when they already were drawn to the state’s other features like a favorable tax structure, experts say. The Tennessee Department of Economic & Community Development announced in May that AllianceBernstein Holding LP would its corporate headquarters and about 1,050 jobs to Nashville from Manhattan. ‘On the backs of taxpayers’ When the announcement was made, Mark Cunningham of The Beacon Center of Tennessee called for the state to not offer incentives: “While the Beacon Center welcomes AllianceBernstein to Nashville with open arms, it should not be on the backs of Nashville and Tennessee taxpayers. The company is leaving high-tax New York City and coming to Nashville because of our extremely favorable tax structure that includes no state income tax and the phase-out of the Hall Income Tax on stocks and bonds. Their decision to already relocate here before any incentives are awarded proves that we can attract businesses with our economic climate, tax structure, and fiscal responsibility, and that we do not need to give them the tax dollars of hard-working Tennesseans on…

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