* John Kennedy, Chair of the West Michigan Policy Forum

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:11):
Well, I'm going to break some promises tonight.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
Maybe you're hard or too.

Speaker 3 (00:19):
If I've got time.

Speaker 1 (00:22):
It's abod is going to get hurt a four hole
through if I am I going to.

Speaker 4 (00:26):
Get caught up with you?

Speaker 1 (00:28):
Or am I going to break some promises. So let's
say you're a business You've come up with an idea,
maybe you went on Shark Tank, you got the thing
rolling a bit, and you're thinking where could I put
this business? What would make sense? What part of the
country should I work from? And you started to look
around and you said, hmm, maybe maybe Michigan. Well let's

(00:53):
say you came across John Kennedy and he was the
chair of the West Michigan Policy Forum, which he is,
and he's on our radio stage. Are you and t
Line right now? Thank you for being here and welcome
to the program.

Speaker 2 (01:06):
Well, thank you, Michael Patrick, thanks for having me on.
Good morning.

Speaker 1 (01:09):
Thank you give us Well, first of all, is it
a burden to go around with the name John Kennedy?

Speaker 2 (01:17):
Not a negative burden?

Speaker 1 (01:18):
Certainly good that the crown weighs heavy when you pronounce
your name as John Kennedy. Starting when you're in school,
what is your life, what is your career, What is
the way that you've made your way in this world?

Speaker 2 (01:36):
Yeah, so I have been a serial entrepreneur. I started
a number of businesses, basically the Autocam companies. One was
in the automotive business, which we built into a relatively
nice sized business, but from starting nineteen eighty eighty in Michigan,
and it was our global headquarters, and it was we

(01:57):
had a couple of thousand employees when we were when
I sold the business in September fourteen, and the business
still exists, and now I've pivoted into the med device space.
We have Autocam Medical and it's a very nice Michigan
business which has grown dramatically without incentives, by the way,

(02:21):
in uh uh basically in Grand Rapids, and we have
four hundred employees in West Michigan, seven hundred in the
business you know, uh around the US.

Speaker 1 (02:33):
So when you started that first business, did you do
so with incentives or how did you do you begin
something like that?

Speaker 2 (02:41):
Yeah? What we did it was it was a startup
and we actually wouldn't have been eligible for incentives because
most of the incentive programs require you to be adding
a you know, a large number of employees. Now, we
did receive incentives for building a plant in Marshall, which

(03:01):
still exists in the automotive space. And but we were
you know, we were barely able to make the number
of employees in the incentive because at the time you
had to have at least seventy five new employees. And
you know, and that's quite frankly not the way you know,
a small business grows. Even though we had, you know,

(03:23):
by the end, a couple of thousand employees when I
sold the business, you know, we we don't uh, these
the sore projects and mega the minimum cut off with
seventy five employees. You had to add.

Speaker 1 (03:38):
The headline to the op ed you've written is Michigan
must ditch unfair and failed incentive schemes. Did you write
the word scheme or did they attach that on the headline?
And is that an accurate word?

Speaker 2 (03:53):
Well, I didn't. I didn't write that word. It was
it was pecked and I I, I don't know that
there's schemes, but they're certainly not very effective. We've done
billions and billions of incentives, as I say in the editorial,
but we really haven't gotten the jobs. The example you know,

(04:16):
we spent twenty billion dollars over the last you know,
twenty some years doing incentives, and we have less employment
than we had when we started those incentives. So this
isn't effective. So I think what we have to look
at in the state is what does what makes it
conducive for businesses to grow and prosper in Michigan. And

(04:37):
you have to look at things like regulation, right to work,
some of those things which are reasons why businesses come
to a place where it looks inviting for businesses to
build and grow.

Speaker 1 (04:51):
Your article that you've written is intriguing to me because
when someone's listening right now, including myself, they say, oh, here,
the state of Michigan gave these inst entives. They gave
away this money to you know, sort of buy their
way to prosperity. That money is my money, isn't it?
And your money? And anyone who's.

Speaker 2 (05:08):
Listening, absolutely, I think that's one of the terrible things.
And so you know, and I'm I'm not opposed to
the companies that we've brought here and etcetera, and the
ones that have added the employees that they promised and etcea.
I think we need to be doing everything we can
to make it hospitable for businesses to come here. But

(05:31):
who pays for incentives? It's all of the people that
are still here, and you know, Quay Frankie, it's small
and medium sized businesses who aren't often eligible for those
same incentives.

Speaker 1 (05:45):
Is there a way to sort of figure let's so
that we can bring it down to our level? How
much am I paying? How much have families of four,
for instance, paid on these boondoggles?

Speaker 2 (05:56):
Eight thousand dollars, you know, is much the incentives have
costs the average citizen, so not very high. You know.
We can look at auto jobs and we have half
the auto jobs that we had when we started doing
these incentives, which a lot of the incentives and I'm

(06:18):
not once again, I'm not being critical of the companies,
but a lot of the incentives have been to retain
and grow automotive jobs, you know, particularly in the ev transition,
and we have half the jobs that you know, we
we when we started doing this in very large numbers.

Speaker 1 (06:38):
John Kennedy is chair of the West Michigan Policy Forum.
If Michigan doesn't have incentive programs that are more successful,
won't other states and do not other states already do it,
and if so, are they more successful? And why?

Speaker 2 (06:53):
Well, I think that they've the other states do do incentives,
and so that's always the phrase that everyone uses. And
I'm not saying a an incentive for every business would
be eligible that for adding jobs and adding employment and
adding wages would be necessarily bad. It. Certainly we'd be

(07:15):
better than what we're doing. But if you look at
those other states, they've done other things to make the
business you know, business climate more hospitable to growth and
for the businesses to prosper. And we certainly before we
start talking about incentives, which is at best the icing
on the cake, what we need to do is make
sure that our environment of low taxes, low regulation, et cetera,

(07:40):
is the best for businesses to come here.

Speaker 1 (07:46):
Okay, those states maybe have right to work status.

Speaker 2 (07:51):
Right to work would be a big one. It's it's
in the top five for when you look at there's
a magazine that does you know, business attraction, and they
rank what the factors are, and it's always in the
top five. Right to work.

Speaker 1 (08:06):
And we had it, and then when Governor Whitmer got
elected did away with it, right right, right, Okay, spelled
it right out there, the chair of the West Michigan
Policy Forum, John Kennedy. Well, thank you for your investment
in Michigan and your decisions. By the way, the business
you sold, did it stay here?

Speaker 2 (08:27):
Yeah, it's still here.

Speaker 1 (08:29):
Okay, look at that a man who created jobs and
affected lives and is still doing so. Grand Rapids the
chair of the West Michigan Policy Forum, and he brought
the receipts as they say, he's the chair of the
forum board. There it's Michael Patrick Shield's WTKG, Grand Rapids
and radio stations across the state of Michigan.

Speaker 4 (09:00):
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(09:50):
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