Sen. Alberta Darling: Not Enough Votes Now For Kimberly-Clark Tax Break Bill

A top GOP lawmaker said Monday that Republican state senators don’t have enough votes to pass a bill that would offer Foxconn-style incentives to consumer products company Kimberly-Clark Corp.

The company said last month that it was open to using the incentives now that it had agreed to concessions with the United Steelworkers union.

Republicans in the state Assembly passed the incentives in February after Kimberly-Clark announced plans to close plants in Cold Spring and Neenah, which would eliminate 600 jobs.

But Senate Republicans never took a vote before the Legislature adjourned in March, and several conservative groups came out against the plan, saying it was “simply bad economics and sets a troubling, if not unsustainable, precedent.”

Senate Republicans met recently to discuss returning to Madison to vote on the bill, but State Sen. Alberta Darling, R-River Hills, who co-chairs the Legislature’s budget committee, said they don’t have the votes to pass it.

“Right now we probably don’t,” Darling told a Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce forum in Madison. “We had a very good and healthy discussion. And I think there were a lot of questions put on the table. But I have to be honest with you, if we were to go to the floor today and vote, I don’t think there would be the votes.”

If senators pass changes to the plan, which is being pushed by Gov. Scott Walker, there’s no guarantee Republicans who run the Assembly will agree with them.

“I’m not going to say never,” said Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, at the same forum. “But at the same time, we had lots of opportunities to do that.”

Vos said he thought some of the changes could be accomplished by Walker’s veto pen.

“So there’s no need for the Assembly to come back,” Vos said.

Joining Vos and Darling at the forum were Sen. Minority Leader Jennifer Shilling, D-La Crosse, and Assembly Minority Leader Gordon Hintz, D-Oshkosh.

Hintz said Democrats support a plan that would create a revolving loan fund for paper companies to help them modernize. He questioned whether the GOP Kimberly-Clark bill was the best use of the state’s money and said Walker was to blame.

“He got caught with no plan, rattled something off, and now we’re looking at $100 million to keep jobs that we already have that could be all gone in five years,” Hintz said. “To a company that pays no taxes in Wisconsin, who just got a massive tax break at the national level and who has record profits.”

The Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. estimated the Assembly bill could cost the state $7.8 million per year over the course of 15 years.

While Republicans typically negotiate among themselves, Shilling noted that they sought out Democratic votes for the bill the Legislature passed to subsidize a new arena for the Milwaukee Bucks.

So far, she said, Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, had not reached out for help to pass the Kimberly-Clark bill.

“My phone is open,” Shilling said. “My voice mail is empty. And I’m looking forward to a call and a dialog with the majority leader when he feels comfortable reaching out to the minority leader.”