Delaware Taxpayers Increasingly on the Hook as Fisker Auto Plant Idles
4th January 2013
Read it.
Delaware taxpayers appear to be getting soaked twice under a deal in which the Democratic governor loaned $21.5 million to a hybrid electric carmaker to set up shop in the state. The company has yet to produce a car in Delaware, and taxpayers are footing the electric bill for the idle plant.
The deal was enthusiastically announced in 2009 by Gov. Jack Markell and Vice President Biden — formerly Delaware’s senior senator — as a way to bring as many as 2,500 green jobs to the state. But California-based Fisker Automotive Inc. has since suffered a series of setbacks that have compounded its shaky financial situation.
Life in a Blue State. You’d think they’d learn, but they never do.
“It has not worked out the way he had envisioned,” Markell spokeswoman Cathy Rossi acknowledged Monday in a statement to FoxNews.com.
Sort of an archetype of Democrat ‘crapitalism’ everywhere.
“We didn’t know and couldn’t have known about the underlying technical and financial problems.”
Not that they made any effort to find out. Asking somebody who knew something about business — a banker, say — would have been a good first step.
The $21.5 million from Delaware is composed of a $9 million grant and a $12.5 million loan that includes so-called “claw backs” should Fisker fail to meet deadlines. However, recovering that money should the company fold will not be easy.
No shit.