(Bloomberg Opinion) -- When Ford Motor Company announced plans to build a 4,100-acre electric truck and battery plant outside Mason, Tennessee, it created a rare opportunity to uplift a struggling, Black-majority rural town. Now, as state officials seek to step in and grab the benefits, Mason’s leaders urgently need Ford’s help to keep that hope alive.
A town of fewer than 1,400 residents, 60% of whom are Black, Mason faces ample economic challenges. Decades of disinvestment and mismanagement by White-controlled governments — including one official indicted for stealing more than $600,000 — resulted in poor services, high property taxes and daunting debts. The town’s first predominantly Black administration, elected in 2016, has worked to correct the failings of its predecessors, reducing the debts by hundreds of thousands of dollars. Still, jobs remain scarce: One major employer, a private prison, recently closed.
The planned $5.6 billion Ford plant, called Blue Oval City, promises to be a godsend. Just five minutes’ drive away, Mason stands to reap a significant portion of the more than 27,000 direct and indirect jobs that state officials expect the project to generate. This would boost property values and vastly expand the town’s revenue base, providing its leaders with the resources needed to improve services, balance the books and perhaps even lower tax rates.
Suddenly, however, State Comptroller Jason Mumpower has taken an intense interest in Mason. Last month, he made the highly unusual move of publishing an open letter to residents, imploring them to relinquish their town charter and cede authority to the surrounding, predominantly White Tipton County. Citing high taxes, financial mismanagement and fraud, he threatened to take control of the town’s finances if it failed to comply – a threat he has since fulfilled, with slight adjustments.
The rationale for Mumpower’s hostile takeover is specious at best. The transgressions he mentions have little or nothing to do with the current administration. He argues that the town has submitted late audits since 2001, but then why is the state acting so urgently and aggressively now? Audits of other, predominantly White Tennessee municipalities have revealed numerous issues including consecutive years of budget shortfalls, accounting irregularities, late deposits and misclassified funds, without such intervention from the state.
Mumpower, who is White, insists that his actions are in the interests of Mason’s citizens, and aren’t racially motivated. Yet absent a better explanation from the state, it’s hard not to see this move as an effort to siphon resources from a disadvantaged community desperately in need of renewal. It’s difficult, too, not to look at it against the backdrop of a fraught history stretching back to the Reconstruction era, in which southern Whites employed accusations of mismanagement to undermine Black political empowerment. To this day, an unfortunate correlation persists between Black representation in local government and state takeovers.
Ford has so far stayed out of the Tennessee fray, other than to express concern. If it wants to be a good corporate citizen, it should press state officials to explain their actions, and stand up for the right of Mason’s democratically elected government to ensure that the local community benefits from its investments. Beyond that, the company can build local capacity and unlock potential by contracting with Black-owned accountants and auditors from the area, and by providing internships and scholarships.
The Blue Oval City project has the potential to demonstrate how corporations can revive and revalue Black communities. Ford should not let this opportunity go to waste.
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
Andre Perry is a senior fellow at Brookings Metro. He is the author of “Know Your Price: Valuing Black Lives and Property in America’s Black Cities.”
Tonantzin Carmona is a David M. Rubenstein Fellow at Brookings Metro.
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