| It's both. A mix of incentives (that were not paid out) and land reclamation (which did cost money): > Ford, meanwhile, lowered its job creation estimate from 2,500 to 1,700, though so far it has created zero, and received no state money, as the building is still under construction. The state did, however, spend another $780 million on site preparation. Most of the claims in the article are slightly obfuscated as to which actually involved any real net cash flow. Even the bottom line: > Of the $2.7 billion offered, $1.8 billion has been spent—transferred either to companies or to local economic development agencies. Doesn't make it clear what the local economic development agencies actually did with it - whether the projects were otherwise necessary, etc. Some of the spending was likely defensible even if the originally intended project fell through. Lots of it probably wasn't defensible. Michigan (and every other state) gives a lot of money to 'developers' in ways that don't look great if you bother to look into it at all. Michigan's state budget probably totaled ~$700 billion over the past 8 years. So this accounts for up to 0.2% of the budget. |