“The use of Recovery funds for the potential relocation of jobs from one state to another is not an approved use of Recovery Funds,” Biden wrote in a July 14 letter to Turner, R-Centerville, and Boehner, R-West Chester. “If the city of Columbus applied for Recovery Act funds to purchase a facility to house NCR to facilitate the relocation of jobs from Ohio to Georgia, the request would not be granted.”
At issue is a $5 million stimulus request the Georgia city of Columbus made to buy a building that previously housed Panasonic.
In a statement, NCR spokesman Jeff Dudash said the building would house new jobs from NCR’s ATM manufacturing. “NCR now outsources its manufacturing to a number of providers, including a South Carolina company and offshore providers, Dudash wrote. “Our plans to in-source manufacturing in Columbus will result in hundreds of net new U.S. jobs. We looked at options in low-cost countries and decided to create this facility in the U.S. Our investment in this new manufacturing facility is not dependent on the City of Columbus receiving stimulus funding.”
Still, Turner argued that any stimulus money used for a consolidation of NCR jobs in Georgia would effectively be jobs used to help strip NCR’s world headquarters from the Dayton area. NCR announced earlier this year that it plans on moving its world headquarters from Dayton to Duluth, Ga.
Columbus Mayor Jim Wetherington has said the city is prepared to pay for $6.5 million of the $8 million needed to buy the building but hoped to use the $5 million from the federal government to offset the price. The money would also go towards the construction of a new building.
Turner said he plans to give a copy of the letter to U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., whose congressional district houses the manufacturing jobs in question. “This really goes to the integrity of the administration claiming that the stimulus was going to create or retain jobs,” Turner said. “Moving jobs from one state to another discredits the whole process.”
He said he believed Biden’s letter was aimed at barring future attempts to move jobs from one state to another.
But Boehner cited the request as another example of how the stimulus was not working. “Since the stimulus was signed into law in February, Ohio has lost nearly 80,000 jobs and families are rightly asking, where are the jobs?” Boehner said.
Both Turner and Boehner opposed the stimulus bill.
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