Marshall — Two years ago, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, flanked on either side by patriotic-colored Ford EV F-150s, delivered news of triumph at the Ford BlueOval Battery Park celebratory event: “Today we are coming together to celebrate a big win for Team Michigan.”
The governor continued: “Michigan is competing and Michigan is winning against other states and nations.”
That’s right: Michigan is winning against entire nations. And Michigan, she says, is willing to “work with anyone who wants to get things done.”
What exactly is it that we’re winning? It’s hard to know. What we can say is that Team Michigan is willing to work with almost anyone from almost anywhere.
But there are some caveats to that rule. Team Michigan was, after all, not so willing to work with the inconvenient residents of Marshall Township. Whitmer’s Michigan only rewards those who want to “get things done.”
Whitmer’s big win was to revolutionize the small town of Marshall without a care for the people who live there.
Global Scale, Local Transformations
In January 2023, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced that he had blocked Ford from building a factory in Virginia, citing the auto company’s partnership in the project with a Chinese battery company called CATL.
What Virginia rejected, Whitmer and her Michigan Economic Development Corporation enthusiastically embraced. They schemed up the joint Ford-CATL plant, announcing at the February 2023 BlueOval Battery Park celebration that the factory was coming to Michigan.
Whitmer had her plan, but she needed a site. Marshall (pop. 6,822) is 100 miles west of Ford World Headquarters in Dearborn. The small town straddles the banks of the placid Kalamazoo River. Marshall has retained much of its native character. Or at least, it had.
Team Michigan’s plan to build the 2-million-square-foot lithium-ion electric vehicle battery production “megasite” smack in the heart of Marshall Township had become a fact of the future.
That Team Michigan would entice Ford and CATL with a record-breaking “economic development” package reaching astronomical numbers: $775 million in projected tax breaks over 15 years, $210 million in “performance-based” grants, $330 million for road and infrastructure projects around the factory, and $300 million for other industrial growth in the area.
According to state Sen. Jonathan Lindsey, much of this was granted through the Michigan Economic Development Corporation, though some also came from the legislature and the municipal government.
Lindsey, a Republican representing nearby areas of Calhoun County, told Michigan Enjoyer that he, like Youngkin, brought up national security concerns when the matter came before the legislature.
Suspicious of CATL’s dubious connections, he forced a vote that would require Ford to “certify in writing that they had done a national security review.”
His motion to conduct that review failed along partisan lines, as did objections to the state’s tax incentive offer.
The Master Plan
With the legislature on board, Whitmer and the bureaucracy needed local officials to play ball.
Enter James Durian, CEO of the Marshall Area Economic Development Alliance, otherwise known as MAEDA.
Created in 2012 for the express purpose of networking with corporations and maneuvering tax breaks for them, MAEDA is conveniently located within Marshall City Hall.
Durian, among other things, was charged with the promotion of Marshall’s “megasite,” later to become BlueOval.
According to Durian, the project was a win-win.
“This innovative project will be a magnet for thousands of jobs and billions of dollars of new capital investment into our region which will help to improve the quality of life for our entire community,” he said during the site’s announcement.
For Durian, BlueOval would bring to Marshall an “entirely new talent pipeline.” The mayor agreed, calling the deal a “once in a lifetime economic opportunity.”
But they had a problem: the people of Marshall Township, whose daily lives would be most immediately transformed. For the project to begin, it was necessary to rezone the land where the factory would be built. The rezoning, it turned out, would be residents’ one and only means of checking the megasite build.
At a meeting in April 2023, the joint Marshall and Marshall Township Planning Commission voted 4-2 against recommending rezoning the land for heavy industrial use. After that decision, the churning development machine then concentrated all its force on the Marshall City Council.
At its meeting in May 2023—which lasted until nearly 3 a.m.—the council allowed groups with vested interests in the project to speak at length first, before the residents of Marshall and Marshall Township had a chance to object.
With the authorities thus appealed to, the city council passed the rezoning ordinance unanimously in the face of overwhelming opposition from native residents. Marshall would have its factory.
Are the Locals on Team Michigan?
So who is actually on “Team Michigan”? Whitmer is clear: “Anyone who wants to get things done.”
But what about those who don’t care to “get things done,” at least not the same “things” as Whitmer?
What about the people of Marshall Township and the many others like them, who are not compelled by her vision of Michigan as a green-energy leader? In the words of James Durian: The task of economic development programs is to “create an entirely new talent pipeline.”
The losers will be replaced.
All of the win-win promises of Marshall’s prosperous future have not aged well. Worries loom large. Given declining demand for EVs—demand which was largely contrived by federal regulations to begin with—Ford has already scaled back its ambitions.
The company initially promised 2,500 jobs for the region, but that number has already been cut down to 1,700. Ford’s announced that reduction only after it received the promised incentives and grants.
Michiganders in local politics feel helpless when Team Michigan steps in to say what will happen in their towns. The result is demoralization.
Jacob Bruns is a teacher and father of four who lives in Hillsdale.
