Tennessee State Official Threatens To Seize Town Over Ford Motor Company Investment

"This is akin to a hostile takeover" says Mason, Tennessee's Vice-Mayor

By Erin Marquis
Today 10:00AM

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Mason, Tennessee, is a tiny town that stands to benefit a great deal from Ford Motor Company’s massive investment in electric trucks and batteries. With construction starting on a 4,100-acre truck and battery plant sometime this year, Tennessee’s Comptroller has a message for elected leaders and residents: Dissolve your town’s 153-year-old charter or the state will simply take the town over.

Mason is less than five miles from Ford’s planned Blue Oval City, one of the new battery and EV truck plants slated to open in 2025 in the American south. The town stands to profit a great deal from the construction and operation of such a plant. It’s the first boon the people of Mason have had in a while. The last few years have been a difficult road. The town of 1,337 property owners — around 60 percent Black — lost nearly all of its white elected officials after they resigned in 2016 when 20 years of fraud and theft came to light. Three years ago, the only grocery store in town was hit by a semi and burned down.

Now Mason is slowly rebuilding with a mostly Black town government. What should be an exciting time in Mason is now a direct threat to its existence as this new investment from Ford is exactly what led Tennessee Comptroller Jason Mumpower to issue the unprecedented request that the town dissolve in order to thrive. The Tennessee Lookout has the story:

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