When Illinois state officials unveiled a $2 billion battery project in 2023 with great fanfare, to be built in a village of roughly 9,000 people, local residents who opposed it faced a battle against more than a multinational company.
Gov. JB Pritzker’s administration welcomed the Gotion Illinois project with a state incentive package valued at $536 million, promises of thousands of jobs, and local approvals that were celebrated as an economic development victory.
Manteno residents met the announcement with homemade signs, comments at public meetings, fundraising against the project, a lawsuit, and government candidates of their own.
Nearly three years later, work is underway at the facility, Illinois has paid Gotion $165 million in cash grants, and residents are still pushing back. …