"The potential to provide any number of Tennesseans with good jobs over the next 20 years … you simply can't let those opportunities pass you by,"

I understand the rationale here, and while it's a valid one, I still think Tennesseans ought to be pretty ticked that this money is not being utilized for the crisis they're facing in the state today. What ought to increase that anger just a skosh here is the fact that they're holding onto this money in the hopes that Volkswagen is going to construct a plant to build cars that we can't afford to drive anyway. If they're going to use this money to provide "incentives" (translation: bribes), they ought to at least try and land a business that isn't sitting at the sunset of its societal usefulness. I don't know, maybe Veedub is going to crank out electric cars like Nissan is planning; great idea, but ummmm folks, Tennessee is one of those states that gets most of its electricity from ....fossil fuels..... Sigh. Sometimes I just can't fathom how public officials arrive at their decisions. It's as if they develop tunnel vision the moment they begin working for the government.

Budget cuts won't touch fund for recruiting industry

By G. CHAMBERS WILLIAMS III and THEO EMERY • Staff Writers • May 13, 2008

A $100 million state fund designed to help land new manufacturing plants and corporate headquarters for Tennessee won't be cut, despite the budget crisis, state officials said Monday.

"The potential to provide any number of Tennesseans with good jobs over the next 20 years … you simply can't let those opportunities pass you by," Economic Development Commissioner Matt Kisber said in a press briefing.

Such funds could be used for road or rail improvements at industrial sites, or to train workers as part of packages to land new employers, even as some state employees lose their jobs to other cuts.

The decision to keep the incentive money in place comes as Tennessee remains on the short list, along with Alabama and Michigan, for a new Volkswagen auto assembly plant. Volkswagen intends to decide in July whether to build a U.S. assembly plant.

An industrial site near Chattanooga, a former Volunteer Army Ammunition Plant location, is among those Volkswagen may have visited.

Site has advantages

Some analysts think Chattanooga could land the VW plant without tapping much, if any, of the site improvement money, though.

That's because the Chattanooga site has infrastructure in place to serve an auto plant, said Jim Frierson, director of the Advanced Transportation Technology Institute at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga.

"The virtue of that site is the extent of work that has already been done on highway and rail access, other infrastructure, and environmental cleanup," Frierson said. "The only thing the state might need to spend money on would be getting a work force ready … job training, job skills, and the employee-selection process."

Kisber wouldn't say whether any of the money was being pledged to Volkswagen, although he said the money could be used for more than one targeted company. Money would be spent only if projects "bear fruit," he said.

The Chattanooga industrial site lost out to Tupelo, Miss., last year for a new Toyota auto factory, which is under construction, but Toyota said Monday that because of slower U.S. sales, it is pushing back the opening of that plant from the original start date in late 2009 or early 2010 to some time in the summer of 2010. That is roughly a six-month delay.

Tennessee has also pledged $35 million in training funds to the General Motors plant in Spring Hill this year to help prepare the work force there to build a new Chevrolet Traverse crossover utility vehicle.

Contact G. Chambers Williams III at 615-259-8076 or cwilliams1@tennessean.com.