For Immediate Release Contact: Sen. Hansen
December 13, 2018 608-266-5670
Passing AB-693 was a bad deal for taxpayers and would have opened the floodgate for more Foxconn deals
(Madison)—Responding to an announcement that Kimberly-Clark would retain its Cold Spring plant after reaching agreement with the state, State Senator Dave Hansen (D-Green Bay) said it shows that a deal could have been reached without passing a law that would have cost taxpayers tens of millions of dollars more and opened the floodgate for other corporations to ask for similar “Foxconn-type” deals.
“This is a victory for the taxpayers, the union workers at Cold Spring and for common sense,” said Hansen who opposed the bill authored by Senator Roth and promoted by Governor Walker.
The bill, AB-693,was the reason Republicans gave for going into a lame duck session that they used to strip power from Governor-elect Evers. But it never made it to the floor for a vote because of broad bi-partisan opposition to it.
“I said throughout this process that I didn’t like the legislation, that it was too expensive for taxpayers at a time when our schools are underfunded, people are going without health care and our roads are in such poor shape. Thanks to cooler heads prevailing in the State Senate taxpayers got a much better deal than the one initially negotiated by Governor Walker.
“It begs the question of what type of savings taxpayers could have seen on the Foxconn deal had the initial agreement been done by a politician with better negotiating skills,” Hansen said.
