I know, it ain’t real pretty reading. Here’s the latest on the pre-Christmas gift to Bruton Smith and SMI. As you can see, county governments are easy targets for a bully like Smith and his empire. Is it any wonder how he got so wealthy? This whole swindle began with SMI’s plan to build a drag strip on the grounds of LOWE’S MOTOR SPEEDWAY in Concord. I usually don’t like to just copy/paste from another source, but occasionally it gets the job done.  So, there it is. It is interesting because this is how Mr. Smith can find the $340 Million to purchase NHIS from Bob Bahre. that is a tidy sum for the Bahre family Christmas stocking.

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Some question millions in incentives to keep Smith’s speedway

By JEFFERSON GEORGE and SHARIF DURHAMS - The Charlotte Observer

While some of the incentives approved to keep Bruton Smith from moving Lowe’s Motor Speedway from Concord could benefit the larger community, the deal is another case of government aid to a company that threatened to leave North Carolina.

Smith agreed Wednesday to invest $100 million to $200 million in renovations and upgrades at the 47-year-old speedway. In return for the billionaire not building another speedway elsewhere in the Charlotte region, officials with Concord, Cabarrus County and the state of North Carolina agreed to provide about $80 million in incentives.

Most of that would come through road improvements, with a half-cent increase in the county sales tax as one possible source of money for the projects.

Details about the incentives and speedway improvements are to be released Monday. Smith couldn’t be reached for comment Friday.

Depending on how much Smith spends on construction, the speedway could see as much as $12 million in local tax breaks, based on a reduction of local property taxes by 85 percent over five years, as other companies have received. Once the tax credits expire, Concord and Cabarrus County could receive $2 million to $3 million a year in new tax revenue.

The bulk of incentives, however, are expected to come in road construction - extensions, widenings and realignments - near the speedway. County residents also will use those roads, but the improvements didn’t emerge as possibilities until Smith threatened to close the speedway.

“This probably helps to speed some of that development,” said state Sen. Fletcher Hartsell, R-Concord.

Rob Thompson of the N.C. Public Interest Research Group, a research and advocacy group in Raleigh, said new roads are better than cash grants and tax breaks, but that “we shouldn’t be reactive to threats about moving.”

“It’s just the wrong way to approach economic development,” he said.

Joseph Coletti of the John Locke Foundation, a conservative Raleigh-based think tank, was more blunt.

“Incentives are usually a bad idea,” he said. “Incentives to keep things are even worse.”

One Cabarrus County commissioner challenged the possibility that Smith would move from Concord. Coy Privette said he hasn’t seen the details of the speedway incentives but that he doesn’t plan to vote for them.

“Who’s going to pay for it?” Privette asked. “Who’s going to pay for those roads, who’s going to pay for the sound barriers and all the other?”

Bob Carruth, chairman of the board of commissioners, supports the incentives and said one funding source could be a half-cent increase in the county sales tax. A property tax hike is less likely, he said.

Smith threatened to close the speedway after the Concord City Council voted Oct. 1 to block construction of a drag strip on speedway property. City leaders wanted data on how noise would affect nearby residents, but Smith instead began considering other speedway sites.

The incentives to be released Monday likely will mirror a list that County Manager John Day e-mailed to commissioners Nov. 8.

On that list, which included some cost estimates, about $11 million in incentives were directly tied to the speedway - items such as a noise reduction barrier and new traffic signals along with the tax credits. Another $61 million were improvements or additions to roads and bridges used by the public.

The package recalls a case earlier this year in which the General Assembly passed a corporate incentives bill giving up to $60 million to select companies that remain in the state, even if they cut jobs.

Goodyear Tire & Rubber’s Fayetteville plant will get $2.5 million a year and a Bridgestone Firestone plant in Wilson will get $2.2 million a year for 10 years as long as each invests $200 million over six years to modernize their plants. But the companies could cut up to 20 percent of jobs - more than 500 at Goodyear - and still get the grants, although reduced.

Hartsell said he voted against that bill and said that each incentives case is different. With the speedway, he said, elected officials had to take Smith at his word that he might move the track and its popular NASCAR races to South Carolina.

“We don’t know what was offered or not offered” by South Carolina, Hartsell said. “Part of it is a poker game.”

The price to play, he said, is incentives. “When everybody is doing it,” he said, “you don’t want to get lost in the shuffle. … I’d rather not give anything.”

Officials in S.C. counties near Charlotte said there seemed to be no real dialogue with Smith regarding speedway sites.

“I haven’t heard anybody talking about it at all,” said Karlisa Parker, director of the economic development department for Chester County.

Steve Willis, the Lancaster County manager, said no one from the county had talked with Smith. And Lyn Garris, spokeswoman for Rock Hill in York County, said no one representing the city had talked with Smith. Same for York County. “Absolutely not,” county council chairman Buddy Motz said. “I don’t know anybody who is.”

That question of competition could hang over Smith’s agreement with Concord, Cabarrus and N.C. officials as it moves through the stages of approval.

But with Cabarrus suffering two major economic blows in recent years - the closure of Pillowtex, and the announcement that Philip Morris will close its plant - Hartsell said it made sense for officials to take Smith’s threat seriously and offer whatever they could for him to stay.

“We couldn’t do a lot about Philip Morris. We couldn’t do a great deal about Pillowtex,” Hartsell said. “There was some capacity for doing something here.”

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