Buying Loyalty

It’s a good thing that Gehl company has decided to stay and expand in West Bend.

Gehl will receive an incentives package worth $7 million to help with the expansion. The company, which makes construction and farming equipment, says it will retain 191 jobs and add another 87 over the next four years. Gehl has manufacturing operations in South Dakota; it closed a West Bend manufacturing plant in 2006.

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One carrot offered to Gehl was the creation of a new four-year engineering program at UW-Washington County to funnel engineers to the company.

But let’s look at the larger picture.  The taxpayers are investing $25,180 per job that Gehl is committing to keeping in Wisconsin.  Furthermore, only 87 of those jobs are new.  The rest are just staying here.  So, the taxpayers are investing $80,460 per new job at Gehl. 

Why does it take this much to keep jobs in Wisconsin?  Why should the taxpayers have to shell out $80k+ for each new job?  Wouldn’t it make more sense to create a tax and legal climate where companies WANT to locate and expand in Wisconsin?  I sure think so. 

As for the engineering program at UWWC, why weren’t we already doing that?  Does it take the threat of a company leaving to get UW to respond?

As I see it, the taxpayers are having to pay Gehl $7 million to stay in Wisconsin because the State of Wisconsin can’t get its act together.  We shouldn’t have to pay businesses to operate here.  We should create a climate that attracts them.