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Closed GM sites to get $800M in cleanup funds
By GRACE WYLER
Washington
The Obama administration announced Tuesday that it will invest $800 million to clean up shuttered General Motors sites in 14 states, including Ohio.
The fund will clean up about 90 closed GM sites, including vacant property in Lordstown. Land owned by Delphi Corp. in Warren will not benefit from the trust money.
In total, Ohio is slated to get $52 million in cleanup funds.
Ed Montgomery, director of the White House Council on Automotive Communities and Workers, announced the cleanup trust fund at a conference Tuesday sponsored by the White House and the Brookings Institution. The conference was about the future of auto workers and automotive communities affected by the government-led bankruptcy of GM last summer.
The framework would allocate $536 million for brownfield cleanup and about $300 million to pay for property taxes, demolition costs and other expenses.
The administration will work with the states to finalize the plans in the next few weeks and will present a settlement to the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York for approval.
Larry Summers, director of the National Economic Council and co-chair of the Council on Automotive Communities and Workers, gave a positive assessment of General Motors’ future in his remarks to the conference.
“There is a real prospect of the government recovering most, if not all, of its investment in General Motors,” Summers said.
The Detroit automaker announced Monday that its first-quarter net income rose to $865 million, a major reversal from the $6 billion loss GM reported in the first quarter of 2009.
The company has repaid $6.7 billion in government loans, but the bulk of the loans is in a 61 percent stake in the company.
The money for the $800 million cleanup will come from a $1.2 billion Treasury Department fund provided to “wind down” the bad assets of old General Motors.
The trust will be the largest federal framework for the cleanup, redevelopment and reuse of old facilities, Summers and Montgomery said.
The conference – “Auto Communities and the Next Economy: Partnerships in Innovations” – also featured remarks from Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, a co-chair of the council; Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm; Detroit Mayor Dave Bing; United Auto Workers union president Ron Gettelfinger; and other community leaders and elected officials.
Youngstown Mayor Jay Williams and U.S. Reps. Tim Ryan of Niles, D-17th, and Charlie Wilson of St. Clairsville, D-6th, were scheduled to attend but opted to stay in Youngstown for President Barack Obama’s visit to V&M Star on Tuesday.
Speakers highlighted collaborative efforts among the federal government, local elected officials, the private sector and nonprofit foundations in retraining and educating the work force and cleaning up brownfield sites.
“We all now realize, I think, that we are in this together – government, industry, labor and academia,” said U.S. Rep. Sandy Levin, D-Mich.
Representatives from several automotive communities – including Youngstown, Warren, Canton, Cuyahoga County, Detroit, Janesville, Wis., and Shreveport, La. – attended a series of panels on reinventing America’s manufacturing base and reusing former manufacturing space to help automotive communities deal with layoffs and plant closings.
William D’Avignon, director of Youngstown’s Community Development Agency, filled in for Williams at the conference, speaking on a panel on land use in automotive communities.
Many automotive cities are looking at the accomplishments of Youngstown’s 2010 program as an example of how to use resources more efficiently and make a city smaller and greener, D’Avignon said.
“A lot of people are looking at some of our strategies and what we have already accomplished,” D’Avignon said.
“The key significance of this conference is that there is a federal acknowledgment of what is happening to the older industrial communities – they are looking at us as a separate issue.”