My Hometown: Left Behind Again
Genesee County was on the precipice of a resurgence. After last week, that's in doubt.
Last week, I was driving to breakfast with an old friend then headed into work. I’ve been listening to Bruce Springsteen’s music all summer long. I don’t know why it took me so long to get into The Boss, but with the zeal of a convert, his music has been on constant repeat. The second to last track on Born in the U.S.A., “Dancing in the Dark,” blared through my speakers and was interrupted by my phone ringing. I answered the phone and had a pit in my stomach as the words came out from the other line: a transformational project that would have created tens of thousands of jobs in my community was dead. Years of work were over and along with that the hope I’ve held in my heart for a second chance for my community. I thanked the person on the other line as the music began to play again. Next up was the last track of the album: “My Hometown.” As tears welled in my eyes, thinking of what this meant for my community, I listened to the lyrics:
And vacant stores
Seems like there ain't nobody
Wants to come down here no more
They're closing down the textile mill
Across the railroad tracks
Foreman says, "These jobs are going, boys
And they ain't coming back
To your hometown
Genesee County was once the envy of the world. Flint was a General Motors town where people in the city and surrounding suburbs could find good paying jobs. In the 1950s, Genesee County boasted the highest median income in the state and one of the highest in the country. In the 1960s, Flint’s population alone reached nearly 200,000 residents. By the 1980s, over 85,000 people worked for General Motors in the community. This Genesee County was far from an idyllic Leave it to Beaver-esque world, but it did provide opportunity for thousands of families.
Our community’s economic foundation was built on shifting sand instead of firm rock. In 1980, 90% of Flint’s wages, salaries, and shareholder earnings were tied to GM products. When the factories began to close down, so too did economic security for thousands of people. That 85,000 height for GM jobs in 1980 declined substantially, eventually dwindling to less than 10,000 today. In 1968, Flint public schools had 48,000 kids enrolled. Today, there are only 3,000 kids enrolled. Even if you factor in school of choice or charters, it’s still a 75% decrease. Genesee County’s unemployment, life expectancy, and children in poverty are all worse than the state and national averages. Long before Flint was associated with the water crisis, it was Michael Moore’s documentary Roger & Me that was often brought up by outsiders. The water crisis would not have happened if it was not preceded by decades of the region being hollowed out of its once vibrant manufacturing sector.
In my lifetime, members of our community have only ever spoken of our best days occurring long before I was born. That began to change a few years ago. Land began getting cleared for a supposed “megasite.” A public-private partnership was forged to get a site ready to attract a major manufacturing facility. This dovetailed with the passage at the federal level of the CHIPs and Science Act which would offer incentives to reshore manufacturing of critical industries. When the COVID-19 pandemic ground supply chains to a halt and drove up inflation, policy makers in Washington began to work on how best to bring those goods made halfway around the world home.
The plan was for an American semiconductor company whose manufacturing was done almost exclusively in Japan to reshore their production to Genesee County. For folks in DC, it was a matter of national security. For my community if we landed this deal, it would be a once in a generation opportunity that would create upwards of 10,000 high paying jobs. That job number was the floor not the ceiling because of the multiplier effect in the region. Other suppliers would flock to the region. Local restaurants and small businesses would boom. Families planning to leave would stay and new folks would move in. I’d long argued that President Joe Biden’s domestic policy was historic for its investments in communities all across America. Soon it would be Genesee County’s turn. I and many other folks my age who had only ever heard of the good times in Genesee County believed this opportunity would allow us to see them for ourselves.
The company meticulously prepared their application and submitted it to the CHIPs Office in the summer of 2024, and we waited. And waited. And waited. Throughout the battles of the 2024 general election, it made all of the sense in the world to many of us locally that President Biden and Vice President Harris would announce the creation of thousands of jobs in a critical county in a critical state in a critical election. When the election was over and the Biden administration began tying up as many loose ends as possible before President Donald Trump returned to the White House, we assumed that this project would be on the to-do list. From the ARPA package to the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the Inflation Reduction Act to the CHIPs and Science Act, President Biden’s domestic programs helped millions of Americans but there was still more to do. Genesee County needed this project. Months continued to pass and on January 20th, my community’s future much like the rest of the country was placed in Donald Trump’s hands.
Why was the application for this project not completed under President Biden? It’s the same reason why this year has had a proliferation of books like Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson and Why Nothing Works by Marc Dunkelman: government is not working effectively and efficiently for many Americans. Transformational pieces of legislation like the CHIPs and Science Act get bogged down in burdensome red tape and bureaucracy. The intentions are noble and the implications historic, but the implementation is nearly impossible. The CHIPs Act which was focused on reshoring domestic manufacturing was a victim of what Ezra Klein has called “everything bagel liberalism.” A project like a semiconductor company coming to Genesee County had to check boxes on everything ranging from “equity strategies” and “climate and environmental responsibility plans” to investments in transit and education. I have dedicated my career to all of these kinds of investments, and their impacts when done correctly are positive, but when a piece of legislation is written to be all things to all people it ends up helping no one.
I wanted this major win to happen as a capstone of President Biden’s legacy, and I knew that it was more likely than not that President Trump would somehow find a way to ruin this opportunity teed up for him to take credit. When President Trump took office, I said that I would put a construction helmet on whomever was president to get this project done for my community and that sentiment was shared by the hundreds of people who had been working for years to get it done. The application simply needed a nod from him. Our hope was that the policy makers in his administration would see this as a win for bringing jobs back to the United States and that the egotistical president would be excited by the idea of claiming it was all because of him.
If you are reading this, you know what Donald Trump has done in his first six months. He’s cut programs at home and abroad that are lifelines for millions of people. He’s weaponized immigration systems in a way that strikes fear in the hearts of people of all immigration statuses. He’s rushed to launch trade wars only to just as quickly back out of them. He’s brought our country closer to authoritarianism than at any point in American history. Did you really think he was going to care about offering a struggling community like Genesee County a helping hand?
Frustrated by the delay in approval, the company finally decided to pull out of its investment near the 6-month mark of Trump’s presidency. His enablers who spend more time serving him than serving their constituents have been in damage control and claimed that he’ll get a better deal for Genesee County. An investment will happen in the location at some point, it is too good of a location according to people who work in economic development at all levels of government and business, but this was Genesee County’s last, best hope.
There was a numbness that came over me after I got the call that this project was dead. I have plenty of priorities and policy interests as an elected official, but this was the closest thing to a silver bullet for reviving my community that I will probably ever see. Our community is composed of the hardest working people you will ever meet. We just wanted another chance. I know in my heart that there will be other chances and opportunities, but right now I grieve for what could have been.
I awoke from a quite night, I never heard a sound
Marauders raided in the dark and brought death to my hometown, boys
Death to my hometown
They destroyed our families' factories and they took our homes
They left our bodies on the plains, the vultures picked our bones
Bruce Springsteen, “Death to my Hometown”
It's sad that places like Flint decline, but the roots of this decline run deeper than local disinvestment or one party’s policy choices. Flint’s long slide is part of a broader story: the cumulative impact of decades of poor fiscal, monetary, and regulatory decisions that eroded the foundations of American industry.
In particular, U.S. auto manufacturing was battered by complacency, inflationary pressures in the 1970s, inconsistent trade policy, and regulatory frameworks that too often favored short-term consumer gains over long-term industrial resilience. These macroeconomic missteps—across both parties—hollowed out not just Flint, but entire regions once anchored by thriving sectors: think of Pittsburgh's steel mills, Binghamton’s electronics industry, or textile and furniture industries in the Carolinas. In Kalamazoo, there were robust paper and pharmaceutical industries as well as the Checker Motors cab company (out of business) and Gibson Guitars (left town). Port Huron had a robust boat industry with Chris-Craft and other companies. In each case, the government’s policy made it too expensive or difficult to keep doing business in these places.
Here's an example of the negative effects of US monetary policy. The Federal Reserve has a goal of 2% annual inflation. If the Fed is successful in meeting that goal, that means the price of everything increases 20% over 10 years instead of increasing, staying the same, or decreasing based on actual market conditions (market conditions are simply the cumulative effect of individuals freely interacting amongst themselves to determine the value of products and services). Apply this to the hundreds of parts that constitute a vehicle made by GM and labor contracts that contain raises based on inflation and we can see why GM is not making cars in Flint anymore.
The mega site might have produced some jobs, but at a significant reallocation of resources. That type of socialism rarely works or if it does, does not work for long. It’s more likely that the mega site would have been another Auto World. The government cannot create wealth; it can only protect wealth (through honoring/protecting property rights and enforcing contracts) or destroy wealth due to misguided policies or outright appropriation (takings and excess taxes).
The simple solution, which works every time, is to improve the fiscal, regulatory and monetary policy of the country. History shows us that even when we make some temporary improvements in those areas, the situation improves. Unfortunately, it's human nature for people to complicate or attempt to control things. People like to complicate things by searching for silver bullets (Auto World, the mega site) or to just outright control things by having the government allocate capital instead of letting the public do that themselves.