Cities Bid for Tesla Truck Plant Despite Shrinking Coffers
The urge to lure businesses with billion-dollar tax and subsidy packages remains strong.
Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum drives past a 75-foot-tall “Golden Driller” statue remade in Elon Musk’s image on May 20.
Photographer: Ian Maule/Tulsa World/Tulsa World/AP Photo
On the evening of March 10, Toby Teeter was attending a musical at Memorial Hall in downtown Joplin, Mo. During intermission, he checked Twitter. “Scouting locations for Cybertruck Gigafactory. Will be central USA,” Elon Musk had tweeted. “Joplin Chamber President here,” Teeter replied while in the lobby with his three kids and parents. “I’m authorized to give you 100 acres in biz park at crossroads of I-44 and I-49 at the center of the USA…Plus $50+ million in incentives.”
In the ensuing weeks, lockdowns took the air out of Joplin’s booming economy. Unemployment jumped. City revenue, almost exclusively generated through sales taxes, plummeted as stores and other local businesses closed, making the prospect of landing a new Tesla plant irresistible. “It would completely change the city,” Teeter recalls thinking. So, after submitting a formal bid to the company, he vied for Musk’s attention again: “Joplin is offering a $1 BILLION package of incentives,” he tweeted, before going on to detail the hundreds of million in additional inducements offered by the state.