Del. Ben Cline, R-Rockbridge, has blamed Virginia’s tax-and-spend policies for the Ford Motor Co.’s decision to close its Norfolk pickup-truck assembly plant. The Newport News Daily News quotes him as follows, comparing Virginia to Michigan:

“We are reaping the same results from this type of tax-and-spend policy with the events in Norfolk and the announcement of the Ford plant closing,” he said. “We’re seeing the same effects that Michigan has seen from their tax and spend policies.”

I agree with Cline’s premise that Virginia has adopted a tax-and-spend policy towards transportation, and I totally support his effort to hold the line on tax increases. But I also think it’s important to base arguments on well-founded facts. And the fact is, Cline has absolutely no evidence that Virginia’s tax burden — which, as the Kaine administration has pointed out, is relatively low compared to other states — was responsible for the Ford announcement.

Based on the press reports I’ve seen, Ford has given only the vaguest of explanations for its decision to shut down the Norfolk plant. The company has indicated that it wants to shift to a new system of flexible manufacturing, a system that entails the ability to shift production rapidly and inexpensively from one auto model to another. This new methodology requires a very different factory layout than the old manufacturing paradigm in which auto plants produced long runs of the same model.

I would conjecture that Ford’s Norfolk plant, which was built in 1925 — making it 80 years old — has a layout and configuration, literally locked in steel and cement, that is impossible to adapt to flexible manufacturing methods. I don’t know this to be the fact, but it sounds far more plausible than the notion that Virginia’s business taxes were too onerous. It would be helpful if the reporters covering the Norfolk plant closing would probe that angle.

Based on the information disclosed so far, there is no evidence to justify pinning the Norfolk plant closing on Virginia’s “tax-and-spend Democrats.” If anything, one could plausibly argue that Virginia’s business tax burden was a point in favor of the Norfolk plant. But we just don’t know because Ford isn’t releasing details.

The case for low taxes must be built on supportable facts, not fanciful speculation, or we risk losing credibility with the public.

Update: Here’s the Virginian-Pilot’s coverage, quoting a Ford spokesman as explicitly denying that taxes were a factor in the decision… And the reaction of Will Vehrs at Commonwealth Conservative.