Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. and its Lawton manufacturing plant are coping with a downturn. As a direct result, so is Comanche County government.
Goodyear announced in mid-May that its manufacturing plant in Fayetteville, N.C., will close by the end of next year — at a cost of 1,700 jobs — to reduce production capacity and production cost per tire in the Americas.
The Fayetteville facility is Goodyear’s third-largest North American plant by capacity, behind plants in Lawton and in Tupelo, Mississippi, Modern Tire Dealer reported.
Company President and Chief Executive Officer Mark Stewart said, during an Aug. 6 earnings call, that the decision to close the Fayetteville plant was “a meaningful part” of offsetting inflation costs.
He said the decision “is very much about balancing supply and demand in the areas of the market we want and need to participate in, versus trying to be everything to everyone.”
“As the only remaining U.S.-based tire manufacturer, we are committed to U.S. manufacturing in today’s evolving market,” Stewart said.
The Fayetteville decision was “difficult” but “necessary to strengthen Goodyear’s ability to compete in today’s marketplace and support the long-term health of the business.”
Companywide, Goodyear’s net sales decreased 4.8% year over year to $4.3 billion in Q2 2026, according to a news release. Its tire unit volume came down to 36.5 million, a decrease of 4% in Q2 2026 compared to Q2 2025. However, that rate of decline was less than the 12% year-over-year figure the Akron, Ohio-based company reported in the first quarter of 2026.
Those declines have trickled down to the Lawton manufacturing plant.
Goodyear protested 10 of its tax accounts with the Comanche County Assessor’s Office this year, and reportedly all of them involved intangibles such as computer software. Nevertheless, “We reached an agreement,” County Assessor Grant Edwards told the Equalization Board Monday morning.
Seven of those accounts were settled for less than the original assessments, and the other three remained the same. The difference in tax collections from those seven accounts will be $519,227; one account alone accounted for $252,771.
Now that the tax protests have been settled, the Oklahoma Tax Commission will decide whether Goodyear qualifies for a five-year tax exemption that is based in part on payroll. If it does, the State of Oklahoma would pay those taxes to Comanche County; if not, Goodyear would be billed for the taxes.
“The last thing we want to do is go to court” over tax issues, Assessor Grant Edwards told The Constitution.
In a related matter, State Question 844, which Oklahoma voters rejected overwhelmingly in a statewide election Aug. 25, would have required the Legislature to set a formal methodology for reimbursing local governments for revenue lost from the state’s five-year manufacturing ad valorem tax exemption.
The state question was an attempt to address “the tension we experience between encouraging economic development with tax incentives versus ensuring that local governments receive stable, predictable revenue,” Assessor-elect Brent Easton told The Constitution.
For example, Goodyear’s financial difficulties affect not only the Comanche County government but also the Cache school district.
The county Excise Board also met Monday morning and approved the “estimate of needs” for Bishop, Cache, Geronimo, Chattanooga, Elgin, Sterling, Indiahoma and Fletcher public schools, but not Lawton Public Schools, which had not yet been submitted Monday. The estimate of needs for Flower Mound school district and for the Great Plains Career Tech Center were approved previously.
The Excise Board also accepted the estimate of needs for the Comanche County Health Department and for the City of Lawton (whose sinking fund will be 15.79 mills) on Monday, but the Comanche County Board of Commissioners has not yet settled on a county budget even though it is one-quarter of the way through Fiscal Year 2027.
Because the county still has to provide a 10-day ad valorem tax protest period after the budget is adopted, County Treasurer Randi Burk confirmed that she and her staff may be printing tax statements on Thanksgiving Day next month.
Mike W. Ray is a fifth-generation, award-winning journalist who has more than 55 years’ experience covering municipal, county, state and federal government in Oklahoma and Texas. He can be reached at mike.ray@swoknews.com.
