The Daily Item from Sunbury, Pennsylvania • 36

36 THE DAILY ITEM Sunbury, Nov. 30, 1 987 Luring Volkswagen: An investment under review lease in September 1976 for the plant Chrysler Corp. built but never used, and production or Rabbits began in April 1978. But production did not reach its target of 1,040 vehicles per day until October 1980, when approximately 6,000 employees were on the job. By June 1981 production was down to 940 cars per day and continued falling to the present rate of 400 Golfs and Jettas per day as VW's Japanese and American competitors stole the show in the U.S.

small car market. "We did get 10 years out of it, so you can't call it a total loss," Shapp said the day VW announced the closing. Pennsylvania Gov. Robert Casey immediately committed his administration to helping find a new occupant for the plant, and he refuses to second-guess Shapp for luring VW to the state. "The problem was market forces nothing that anyone here could have dealt with," Casey's spokesman, John Taylor, said in Harrisburg.

Pennsylvania's disappointment with Volkswagen "will sound a cautio nary note in some other states," Brown said. But he said "I'd be depressed and saddened if people were to take the wrong lesson out of what is for everyone a regrettable conclusion" to the Volkswagen story. Economic development "is a process, not a one-shot proposition, in which you are going to have success and failure," Brown said. Volkswagen "is not even a failure, just a change in circumstances, and the change should lead to new initiatives. "Jim Rhodes is not responsible for By Earl Bohn AP business writer PITTSBURGH Pennsylvania spent more than $70 million to land a foreign automaker's first U.S.

plant, perhaps believing as Gov. Milton Shapp said that Volkswagen's arrival was "perhaps the most significant economic occurrence in western Pennsylvania since the days of Andrew Carnegie." The steel industry that Carnegie helped create in Pittsburgh a century ago. although painfully diminished, is still around. Volkswagen is folding its tent after 10 years, reviving the question Shapp faced in outbidding Ohio for Volkswagen's $250 million investment: Was it worth $70 million to $80 million in public funds to get Volkswagen? "It's a profound question that existed on the day the agreements were signed and that exists today," said David R. Brown, who as special assistant to Shapp negotiated the Volkswagen deal.

He said he has mulled over the question for the last 10 years and has one conclusion. "I don't think the package was excessive at all. I think it was right on the money," Brown, a public affairs consultant in Harrisburg, said Wednesday. Brown gets no argument from the man he outbid for Volkswagen, James A. Duerk, who was Ohio's development director under former Gov.

James Rhodes. Had all the money Pennsylvania invested been outright grants to VW, the deal might be questionable, Duerk said. But $40 million of it was a low-interest loan on which VW is not scheduled to begin repaying principal until 1998. "As a loan, and no doubt the loan will be repaid I couldn't criticize Pennsylvania for that," he said. Pennsylvania also spent $30 million building a railroad spur and a highway to serve the plant near New Stanton.

It spent smaller sums helping screen 45,000 job applicants. In addition, the U.S. Environmen tal Protection Agency compromised on air pollution enforcement, and Westmoreland County, two townships and two school districts granted five-year property tax breaks to Volkswagen. Volkswagen announced Nov. 20 it would close its Westmoreland County plant next year, dismissing 2,500 blue-and white-collar workers and reverting to import sales.

Ohio officials never believed Volkswagen was unworthy of the incentives Pennsylvania was offering, Duerk said. Ohio just ran out of things to offer. "When Pennsylvania came up with that low-interest loan we scrambled to see what we could put together," he said. "We couldn't come close." While Pennsylvania was closing in on a deal with Volkswagen, however, Ohio was courting Honda. "I think we got the better deal," Duerk said.

For what Duerk said was "not more than $6 million total" the Rhodes administration got a Honda plant at Marysville, where a workforce of 5,000 people is expected to double under the Japanese automaker's plan to build a second plant. Elected officials feel compelled to seek jobs for their constituents, Duerk and Brown said. "That was the first major auto company to try to make a move in the United States," Duerk said. "That prize was sought by virtually every state in the continental United States," Brown said. "There was almost a national consensus that someone aught to step forward and induce a foreign manufacturer to build product in the United States." 'Don't export jobs, bring them was the theme of the time, he said.

VW had hoped a U.S. plant would recapture at least a part of the glory it enjoyed in the 1950s and 1960s, when its pioneering sub-compact Beetle dominated small car sales in America. The company signed a 30-year I t' -r- Teaching evolution in 1925 provides basis for new film the success of Honda any more than any of us are responsible for the unfortunate market circumstances that surrounded VW," he said. Duerk said one lesson from the Volkswagen experience might be that other states consider adopting a rule the Rhodes administration used in negotiating with Volkswagen and others. "We would not make any offer that could not be paid back to the state in taxes and jobs and everything else in more than five to seven years," he said.

"Honda's paid back already." Is ZZrfC SALE Putf99 399 SAL $999.9 Queen SALE 499 Ml $AA99 .95 239' '499 set Queen 599 Ml SALE $299 .95 rtC 269 fu499 Q5 jM 599 $AA99-" Queen 799 .95 SALE mt. on SALE -799 SALE $A699 .95 Be sure to take advantage of our Dromcit courteous delivery at no rha rno I lea ByAlReiss Ottaway News Service JACKSONVILLE, Ore. With each approaching step of the parade, time moves backward, toward 1925. Under the arching flame of autumn leaves, the marching band plays "Give Me That Old Time Religion." A crowd cheers a man and woman who ride the parade route in the back seat of a 1921 Buick touring car. Someone in the crowd waves a placard reading "God Bless Matt Brady." Another placard reads, "Down with Darwin." The scene makes 1925 possible again, until you look past the edges of the parade, at 1987; until you see that the procession is approaching two 35 mm.

motion picture cameras mounted side-by-side at the near end of the street; until you hear a voice call: "Cut." Mr. and Mrs. Brady become actors Kirk Douglas and Jean Simmons. The band is the high school marching band from the local southern Oregon community. The voice belongs to film director David Greene.

The slice of the past becomes part of a scene for a motion picture being filmed by ITW Productions. "Inherit the Wind" will be shown on NBC early next year. "Inherit the Wind" is a dramatization of the Scopes "monkey trial" held in Tennessee more than 60 years ago. It is adapted from the play written Dy Jerome Lawrence and Robert Lee. An earlier movie based on the play was released in 1960, starring Fredric March and Spencer Tracy.

A teacher, John Scopes, was put on trial for violating the prohibition against teaching Darwin's theory of evolution in a public school. William Jennings Bryan argued for the prosecution. Clarence Darrow represented Scopes. In the new film, Douglas, as Brady, plays the Bryan role. Jason Ro- Head to bards plays Henry Drummond, based on Darrow.

Darren McGavin plays E.K. Hornbeck, a journalist patterned after H.L. Mencken, who covered the trial. All the principal actors were on location here. Interviewed in Jacksonville, Douglas says "Inherit the Wind" is an important film today because the issue of teaching evolution in public schools has again arisen, especially in the South.

Parents who strongly believe in the story of creation as told in the Bible have gone to court to protest curricula which force their children to study theories in which the parents do not believe. "That's why my son, Peter, got excited about it," says Douglas. (Peter Douglas is executive producer.) "We feel that the play is much more timely now." Douglas says that producers of the film went back to the original transcripts of the 1925 trial to make changes in the script changes that he says make the film "much more pertinant to what is happening" today. Douglas foresees the television feature will have a broad impact. "I think it's a subject that people are interested in.

Bryan was a fundamentalist who actually wanted a Constitutional amendment requiring the Lord's Prayer in school. And, of course Darrow fought from the other side." In the 1960 movie, March played Brady and Tracy played Drummond. "We play them a little differently," Douglas says. "Very often the character I play is somewhat of a buffoon. We don't make him a buffoon.

He's a very sincere, honest man who believes in what he believes. And so that makes a much stronger dramatic conflict." In his career, Douglas has made many motion pictures that deal with socially significant themes. Most have been for release in theaters. Now he is involved with television. 'Heads and Tails!" Time Markets! Your Non-Winning $tf9 .95 $39 .95 $399 .95 xaue TAND $449 .95 FURNITURE Lbttery Ticket could win you a delicious Tailgating Party-Pak.

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