Even
though state government specifically refused to give the company – Archer Daniels
Midland, Co., of downstate Decatur, Ill. – a tax incentive that it claimed was
essential to making the move economically viable.
ADM,
A PROCESSOR of crops into food and other products such as fuel, has long been
the staple of the economy in Decatur. But life in central Illinois isn’t
cosmopolitan enough for the corporate executives who run the company.
Which
is why, earlier this year, ADM officials let it be known that they want to move
their corporate offices elsewhere – under the guise of wanting easier access to
airline flights for their executives to travel the world on business.
That
made Chicago, with its O’Hare International and Midway airports, a natural.
Except
to those who are determined to believe that nobody could possibly want to be
associated with Chicago, They were the ones who were pushing the idea that
Illinois would lose ADM unless it got with the program, so to speak, and
started making concessions to businesses even if they made no practical sense.
IN
THE CASE of ADM, they wanted to be given a tax incentive totaling $24 million
during the next two decades. Which really is laughable – a tax break over just
over $1 million per year for a corporation that does billions of dollars of
business per year world-wide.
The
real issue was one of a corporate entity thinking that government somehow
exists to serve it exclusively – even if those interests contradict those of
other people. Personally, I always thought the point of government was to keep
the interests of everyone balanced.
As
it turned out, the Illinois Senate took a vote in favor of the ADM request. But
the Illinois House of Representatives never got around to it.
 |
| They stayed |
Other
issues always managed to pre-empt it from coming up for a vote – particularly the
matter of pension funding reform that the Legislature acted upon earlier this
month in special session.
IT
SEEMS THE allure of Chicago was too much for the ADM officials to pass on –
even if they technically reduced their offer and are now merely moving some
executive positions to the Second City, rather than following through on their
original thought that they would also develop a technology center where great
scientific advances in agriculture would have been developed.
That
would have been an interesting piece to have in Chicago; probably moreso than
the presence of a few dozen suited executives who will now work in the downtown
area and will be lost in the masses of the millions who flood into the Loop
each day to earn a living.
Although
if the dollar figures work out, it wouldn’t shock me to learn that ADM develops
that piece of their corporate puzzle in the future.
But
denying us that piece, for now, is probably ADM’s way of “punishing” Chicago
for making them otherwise “lose face” in that they demanded financial
concessions and wound up getting nothing.
NOTHING,
THAT IS, except for the knowledge that they will be located in THE major city
of the Midwestern U.S. and have access to the wonders that are Chicago.
So
even though there are people who are speculating politically that the winners
were Gov. Pat Quinn (who released a statement Wednesday talking of the “continued
partnership as this dynamic company invests and grows in Illinois”) and his
allies.
I’d
argue the real winner is ADM itself for staying. And the people, because we
rejected the notions of the ideologues who think we have to give and give and
give. That would have been the real loss!
-30-
No comments:
Post a Comment