Lawmakers Press for Oversight, Transparency After Mundy megasite incentive push

LANSING

Lawmakers on the Michigan House Oversight Subcommittee on Corporate Subsidies and State Investments pressed witnesses on the transparency and scale of proposed incentives connected to the Mundy Township "megasite," focusing on nondisclosure agreements, site-preparation spending and authority exercised by the Michigan Economic Development Corporation and Michigan Strategic Fund.

At the hearing, James Hohman, director of fiscal policy at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, told lawmakers "there was $6,000,000,000 signed or included in the letter of intent, and that's not including all of the possible money that this company was going to get from the federal government." Hohman said only about $259,000,000 of that figure had been authorized by statute and that the remainder would have required new programs or appropriations.

Hohman and other witnesses criticized the confidentiality that surrounded the deal. "I don't think we should be offering billions of dollars to secret companies and not telling people about who they're offering it to or how much," Hohman said, and recommended that letters of intent, memoranda of understanding and other pre-deal documents be made public before they are executed.

John Molina, who introduced himself as president of the Center…