Some may call Thursday's Chattanooga and Hamilton County tax breaks settlement with GE Power half a loaf, but that's not the way either Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke nor Hamilton County Mayor Jim Coppinger looked at it.
GE Power agreed to pay the city $3.3 million and the county $2.7 million because the soon-to-close Alstom manufacturing operation did not live up to the targets set in its 2008 payment-in-lieu-of-taxes (PILOT) agreement with the two governments. GE Power bought Alstom's power operation a little more than a year ago and later decided to close the plant and two adjacent operations.
While city and county PILOTs now have clawback language that mandates certain repayments if conditions are not met, the 2008 agreement did not. So when they sought $13 million from GE Power because of the agreement Alstom made, nothing was guaranteed.
Although the $6 million was less than half of what originally was sought, Berke told the Times Free Press editorial board he was ecstatic about the settlement.
It was the first time the city and county attempted to seek compensation against a company that didn't live up to its PILOT agreement, he said. In addition, the agreement's language didn't make clear the two entities could regain anything, and the city and county will not have to spend money and time on attorneys to pursue the case, he said.
Berke told the newspaper's Mike Pare GE Power had taken the position that it may not owe anything because of the lack of clawback language and because the original agreement had been with Alstom. The mayor told the editorial board the threat of a lawsuit brought about the negotiations.
City attorney Wade Hinton said litigation with GE Power would have been time consuming and, no matter who won, the decision likely would have been appealed.
Coppinger said the agreement is "a good deal for us."
Berke noted that no other PILOTs created before the clawback language was added during his administration appear to be in danger of not measuring up.
The Alstom site, as Combustion Engineering, once was Chattanooga's largest employer with 6,000 workers. Still, as Alstom, it had planned to ramp up its workforce in 2007 to make new turbines for an expected renaissance of the nuclear industry that never happened. Today, with 235 jobs ended at the close of 2016, GE Power said it would keep around 50 people in Chattanooga.
On the positive side of the ledger, then, are these: a combined $6 million (plus attorney's fees) for the city and county, pricey waterfront property back on the tax rolls and a prime piece of land that one day could be developed in a variety of different ways.
Not too shabby.