The Gogebic County Economic Development Commission met at GCC this past week. The meeting included several visitors. Dave Anderson was present to bring the Board up to date on the Orvana Copperwood Project.

The Board also heard from Kim Stoker the Director of WUPPDER (Western Upper Peninsula Planning and Development Region). 

Stoker spoke to the Board members about the MEDC's decision to confiscate the U.P.'s Revolving Loan Funds. In his update on the RLF, Stoker told the Board that Ontonagon has been sitting on $150,000 and has processed a loan in two years. Baraga has $350,000 and hasn't processed a loan in 5 years.

So it would appear that the MEDC wants to punish the local Funds for being prudent with their money.

So far only the U.P. has been threatened with a loss of their money. The Banditos from Lansing are not proposing the same scam for their communities.

Stoker calls him self the messenger, however, his bureaucratic regime in Houghton stands to receive several hundred thousand dollars from the Loan Money for simply sitting on it. Stoker and the WUPPDR are simply nothing more than an unnecessary level of bureaucracy.

The Banditos have tried treats and then bribes to coerce the local funds to  join in. Now the "MESSENGER" brought a new threat to Gogebic. That is, the MEDC is sending out auditor(s) to review the local loans. Loans in default will be either written off or where it is found that the local authorities failed to due diligence in processing the loan, then the MEDC will look to the local authority to make good on the loan. First threats, then bribes and then more threats. It would seem that Stoker and Cathy Cole (MEDC) are doing their best to play good cop - bad cop.

Stoker short on answers stated he would get the information to the Commission the next  day.