Download a copy of the $75,000 HUD grant given just three months before Ron Johnson’s job was created: /Uploads/1979hudgrant.pdf
Media Reports Reveal His Job Was Created After HUD Issued $75,000 Grant
MADISON – U.S. Senate Candidate Ron Johnson’s own job at PACUR was created with the assistance of a $75,000 grant from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) that required the company “to create or cause to be created 11 permanent new jobs.”
The latest disclosure, reported in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel yesterday, comes after the media previously revealed that the federal government grant was also used to build a rail extension to Johnson’s business.
Johnson factory rail line built with HUD grant help
“A railroad line to Senate candidate Ron Johnson’s plastics factory was built with the assistance of a federal grant. According to documents from the Oshkosh city clerk’s office, an Urban Development Action Grant in the amount of $75,000 was used to build a rail spur to Pacur, a plastics manufacturing company owned by Johnson. The city resolution approving the grant was passed on March 15, 1979, the year the Oshkosh factory was built.”Johnson, who says he started working at Pacur in 1979 as the accountant, has claimed that he never had any knowledge of the $75,0000 federal government grant for the rail spur to Pacur and the first 11 jobs at the company.
However, in an August campaign speech in Osceola, Johnson is on video telling voters, “When I moved over there, obviously, he asked me to come on over and keeps the books.”
“Ron Johnson has been caught trying to mislead the voters again. He says that government doesn’t create jobs, but this federal grant helped create his own job at Pacur,” said Mike Tate, Chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin. “
The grant, which can be viewed at www.wisdems.org/hypocrisy, shows that the federal grant was approved in March of 1979 for Wisconsin Industrial Shipping Supplies (WISS), but then it was used to build the rail spur and create 11 jobs after WISS hired Ron Johnson and became Pacur in August of 1979.
Johnson has told WKOW in an interview that, “1979 is when we built this plant and started Pacur,” and “At the point I came into the business we were still building this building- we had- the machine hadn’t even arrived.” [WKOW web exclusive interview, 8/20/10]
