Foxconn is a con.

Foxconn is a Con

It must not pass

Praise was almost due to a few remaining sane GOP Wisconsin Senators who refuse to get sucked into the latest Scott Walker/Robin Vos con job. Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald recently told the Governor that the Senate republicans may not have enough votes to pass the Assembly bill approving Walker’s deal with technology giant Foxconn. Fitzgerald and some of his colleagues appeared concerned that the Foxconn con is truly a bad deal for Wisconsin taxpayers and our environment. Fitzgerald soon retreated to safe GOP ground, introducing the bill in the Senate and sending it to the Joint Finance Committee.

It should have been easy to heed the non-partisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau’s numbers showing that a child starting first grade now will be suffering from the tax payments to Foxconn until they are well into their thirties before Wisconsin starts to see a financial break-even point in 2043.

When Republicans tell us they cannot pass the current state budget because they cannot find the money to pay for transportation and education commitments, where do you think they will find an extra $250 million plus per year for the next 25 years to give to Foxconn? They will either have to raise taxes or make further cuts to already strained transportation and education funding. Not a good choice for the “no new taxes” crowd faced with mounting pressure to fund roads and public schools.

Sen. Fitzgerald was also initially concerned with the lightening speed with which Walker and Vos, backed by President Trump who put no federal dollars into the deal, got the Assembly to move on this latest bait and switch con. Only one official public hearing monopolized by invited guests who support the deal before the bill gets a vote next Tuesday is a new low point in the current GOP dominated public discourse. Now Fitzgerald appears on board with speedy passage as well.

Critics from the business community, led by Bloomberg, tell us that this is a truly terrible deal. $3 billion for 13,000 new jobs, many of which will go to folks from Illinois who live close to the border, amounts to a $1200 per Wisconsin family tax payment each year for a good portion of their working lives. When coupled with the $50 million in lost sales tax revenues each year from additional Foxconn tax incentives, the GOP senators with sense should pause to jump on this train.

Even pro-business, anti-government regulation members of the GOP Senate should balk at the wholesale abrogation of state environmental protections in Foxconn’s Walker/Vos proposed new technology district. If the package is passed, Foxconn will alter the course of rivers and streams, fill wetlands with dredged material and divert significant amounts of water from Lake Michigan, all without DNR oversight or burdensome state regulatory filings. The DNR has already hired a project manager to show Foxconn how to avoid environmental laws. Have no doubt, there is going to be little federal oversight either from the newly gutted Trump/Pruitt led Environmental Protection Agency. Wisconsin residents will suffer from Foxconn’s environmental damage long after the sting from their increased tax burdens and spending cuts has vanished.

These objections to the con that is Foxconn should be sufficient to scuttle the deal, but there is more. Topping the list is Foxconn’s history of failed promises to deliver economic prosperity with new facilities. The tech giant failed to follow through on a deal with Pennsylvania to build a new facility there. It has not delivered promised economic benefits in deals in Vietnam, Indonesia, Brazil and India. Next, consider Foxconn’s failure to protect workers in its existing factories from long hours, unsafe working conditions and abusive labor policies. Its leaders have compared their employees to animals and imposed animal behavior modification techniques for control. Hardly a Wisconsin model employer. Fitzgerald complained there is no timeline for the promised job creation in the plan, but backed away from this limited concern for jobs.

Other concerns should give legislators pause. The plan is to give the job of negotiating and then policing Foxconn’s economic promises to Wisconsin’s troubled Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WDEC). You will remember WDEC’s stellar record with shady loans and incentives to businesses that promised to create jobs that never materialized and its subsequent multiple failures to recoup taxpayer money spent to incentivize the failures. It is no surprise that many of those failures were with folks who made substantial campaign contributions to Walker and the GOP.

Gov. Walker is gearing up to run for another term in 2018 and desperately needs an economic victory to distract from his past failed job promises and inability to shepherd a budget through a legislature with solid republican majorities. Here’s hoping there is enough sanity in the GOP Senate ranks to stop this boondoggle in its tracks, even if it costs Walker his re-election bid.

Waring R. Fincke is a retired lawyer and serves as a guardian for the elderly and disabled.