So a multi-billion-dollar corporation (market cap $1.77 billion) wants thousands of taxpayer-dollars from a small city to fund a bus the corporation uses to shuttle her workers to and from other towns where they actually live. The city being imposed upon is Whitewater, Wisconsin, a tiny municipality, like many others, struggling just to balance her annual operating budget.
Whitewater’s situation involves juggling to find ways to support her small downtown merchants and to defend against an infestation of pernicious insects that threaten her many ash trees. Finding the money to do these things while balancing her budget (as she must) requires hard choices.
About taxpayer funding for multi-billion-dollar Generac Power Systems, I’ve written before. See, for example, A Local Flavor of Crony Capitalism, A little consistency would be in order, A Generac bus by any other name, The Generac Bus and Bottom-Shelf Messaging, and The Innovation Express Generac Bus: ‘Public Transit Is Not Expected to Make Money.’
The City of Whitewater’s entire municipal operating budget is about $9 million, but for Generac Power Systems, that entire city budget is merely a small fraction of corporate quarterly revenue. Generac’s annual net income in 2011: $324 million. Everything the City of Whitewater spends, in a place of fourteen-thousand people, is a tiny part of Generac’s revenue.
How well is Generac doing lately? Better than ever. One knows this because her President and CEO, Aaron Jagdfeld, announced Generac’s better-than-ever success in a recent press release:
We initiated our Powering Ahead strategic plan in 2010 that focused on growing the residential standby market, increasing our share of the commercial and industrial market, diversifying our demand, and expanding into new geographies. As a result of our team’s efforts, we have consistently exceeded our own performance goals associated with Powering Ahead and in fact reached many of those targets a year earlier than we had originally planned. We are currently resetting our goals for the next three years and we intend to share those updated growth rates in the near future when we finalize our long-term strategic plan.”
Generac’s stock has since been upgraded.
Congratulations, Mr. Jagdfeld. Well done.
I’ve just one question: Why in the world would you think our small city – with real needs of struggling people – owes your cash-rich, multi-billion-dollar corporation even a dime of taxpayer’s money for a bus to shuttle your private workers?
I’ve a proposal. Here in Whitewater, it’s traditional for applicants for city funds to appear before our common council, during an open session, and explain their need for public money. These sessions are televised and recorded, and applicants speak into an open microphone to the elected representatives of the city, explaining why they want city funds.
Surely you could do the same: if you’ve time to give statements about the better-than-ever performance of your corporation, you’ve time enough to speak to our common council of your ongoing, aching need for taxpayer money.
I’ll do my part, too. I will post on my websites, and on YouTube, your remarks, along with a transcription of them.
My pleasure, I’m sure.
Until then, we’re left with this: neither your corporation nor anyone else has offered a satisfactory justification for this request. It remains as it has been, unworthy of both American private enterprise and municipal finance.