• 
• CLASS
• JOBS
• AUTO
• HOMES

State offered $409 million incentive package in failed GM bid

Sep. 13--As Wisconsin battled with Michigan and Tennessee this year to persuade bankrupt General Motors Corp. to build a new line of small cars at its recently closed Janesville factory, the state upped its ante by $100 million to a total public-private incentive package worth nearly $409 million.

The incentives Wisconsin offered to GM in the ultimately unsuccessful bid were detailed in more than 300 pages of documents released last week to the Journal Sentinel under the state's open records law.

That losing effort to keep GM, however, left Wisconsin with a beefed-up arsenal of financial incentives to offer other companies -- weapons that would not otherwise have been available in recent months when Mercury Marine Inc. was threatening to move from Fond du Lac to Stillwater, Okla., and when Oshkosh Corp. needed to expand its workforce because of a new multibillion-dollar military contract.

''Everything that we were able to get into the budget came about because of General Motors," said state Commerce Secretary Richard Leinenkugel.

As for GM, Leinenkugel and other officials believed at the time that the state's offer to the automaker was more than generous.

''Overall, this unprecedented alignment of stakeholders and resources represents the largest (combined) offering assembled for a Wisconsin business development project," Wisconsin officials said in the offer package, hand-delivered to GM on June 16.

The documents disclose new financial details about Wisconsin's offer, including:

--$213.14 million in concessions from United Auto Workers Local 95.

--$100 million in Enterprise Zone tax credits.

--$24 million in discounts from health insurers and providers.

The state boosted its offer to GM substantially between November and June as the rules of the game changed dramatically -- from trying to get GM to keep the Janesville SUV plant open, to trying to win a bidding war with the two other states over where GM would build the new line of small cars.

Michigan won the small-car plant with an incentive package that dwarfed Wisconsin's. The Michigan bid, which involved a much broader strategy aimed at keeping at least 8,000 people working at about a dozen Michigan plants, totaled more than $1 billion, including $779 million in state tax credits.

For a full story, read Monday's Janesville Gazette, read online in the Gazette’s E-Edition or check back at GazetteXtra.com.