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The incentives bill, which provided $2,000 in annual tax credits for cut-and-sew jobs, would have helped save the 4,500 remaining jobs in the state and potentially brought back another 1,500 from overseas, furniture executives said.
But after passing the state House and Senate by unanimous votes, the bill was vetoed by Barbour, who said the legislation would have cost the battered general fund budget about $11 million. He also said the state tax credit law was designed to encourage newer, higher-paying jobs and the furniture incentives bill did not do that.
“Tell that to the cut-and-sew operators who are averaging about $16.21 an hour,” said Ken Pruett, president of the Mississippi Furniture Association. “They are the backbone of the furniture industry, and while it might not seem a lot to some folks, it means a lot to them and their families.”
Pruett has been the voice for the association, but other MFA members are now speaking out.
One, Jim Sneed, CEO of Affordable Furniture, said he isn’t angry as much as he’s confused about what happened.
“We’ve been working on this for three or four years, and we’ve met with officials from all levels of state government who knew what we were doing,” he said. “Then we get ambushed. It’s just a shame. But I’m not a politician and I don’t want to be.”
What Sneed, Pruett and others are wondering is why there wasn’t an attempt by the Legislature to override Barbour’s veto.
“The bill sails through without dissent, but now nobody’s tried to override it,” Sneed said. “You tell me what’s going on. I know Haley Barbour is well-educated, highly intelligent and he knows politics a lot better than I do. Maybe he knows something we don’t.”
House Speaker Billy McCoy said he would have tried a veto override had the bill been a House bill. But since it was a Senate bill, McCoy said it would have had to be overridden there first.
Greg Roy, president of Lane Home Furnishings, said he, too, was puzzled and disappointed at what happened.
“This is something that we’re not going to let go of; it’s something we can’t let go,” he said. “My goal is to secure and create furniture jobs in north Mississippi. Sure, we have a foot in Asia and a foot in the United States for flexibility, but we want to keep and even bring back as many cut-and-sew jobs as we can here, and that bill would have helped do that.”
Barbour’s thoughts
In his veto message, Barbour said there was a better way to help the industry, and that was through Foreign-Trade Zone manufacturing authority.
But an FTZ application can cost $200,000 to $250,000, furniture leaders say – a princely sum, especially for smaller manufacturers.
“The incentives would have helped a lot more a lot faster,” Pruett said. “No credit, no money would have been doled out until the companies could prove that they had those jobs. On top of that, there was a study done by Mississippi State (University) that showed there would have been a positive net gain in dollars from the incentives.
“But now we have to wait another year to try to bring this back up, and it’s another year that I’m afraid more jobs will be lost in the furniture industry.”
IT IS TOTALLY IRRELEVENT TO HIM IF THE FURNITURE MANUFACTURERS NEED HIS HELP. WHO ARE THEY?
HE REFUSED MUCH NEEDED OBAMA STIMULUS MONEY BECAUSE HE FEARED HIS FRIENDS AT THE COUNCIL OF CONSERVATIVE CITIZENS (UPTOWN KLAN)WOULD REFUSE TO SUPPORT HIM IN HIS QUEST TO BECOME THE NEXT
REPUBLICAN PRESIDENT.
I DON'T BELIEVE BARBOUR COULD GET ELECTED GOVERNOR AGAIN,AND SURELY NOT THE NEXT REPUBLICAN PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.
The sewing jobs that have been lost to China were good paying jobs.Your article states they were over $16.00 per hour.I will assure you that most of the factories that supply Toyota of their parts pay less than that.I am beginning to believe that one of the promises that Mr.Barbour gave to Toyota,was a large pool of unemployed worker's to choose from.Right now that's what I see.
The State will happily spend its credit in a drunken frenzy on behalf of foreign auto manufacturers, makers of high-tech gizmos, etc. -- even dispossess people from their ancestral homes to help gigantic corporations save on legal fees. But help home-grown industry built up patiently over time on the risks, capital, and labor of our own citizens??? Nah, costs too much.
If the State had a consistent laissez-faire policy, such a stance would be comprehensible, but that manifestly isn't the case. If Mr. Barbour has a doctrine or vision on the matter, I wish he'd share it with the rest of us. "When there is no vision, the people perish."
I think the furniture industry is currently in the same place that sharecroppers were two generations ago. After riding the backs of sharecroppers for sixty years and building a culture on their sweat and tears, the post-war generation became embarrassed by 'cropping, and sons of 'croppers went to great lengths to deny their heritage. Is it possible that the sons of hard-working furniture manufacturers are embarrassed by their daddies' unglamorous enterprise, and had rather be involved in making and distributing the latest version of a video game?