MDA: Is politics getting in the way?

By Staff
March 17, 2002
What does it take for Mississippi's economic development agency to get the respect it seeks?
After all, Site Selection magazine just ranked Mississippi seventh in the nation in terms of industrial growth and job creation for the year 2001. The ongoing investment in the $930 million Nissan automotive manufacturing plant in Madison County was a primary reason.
And, it's a good reason. Landing Nissan was a tremendous coup for Mississippi and took the combined efforts of federal, state, local and private interests. The plant will eventually employ some 4,000 workers, although word is it's having trouble finding the skilled workers it needs, even at wages that will average about $20 per hour. Nissan will have a huge impact in a state that has lost, according to the Associated Press, 13,400 manufacturing jobs in the past year and is tagged with its highest unemployment rate in the last year and a half 6.9 percent.
Nissan is said to be Mississippi's gateway to prosperity in the auto manufacturing business as international companies seek to build in the lucrative U.S. market. If Nissan can make it in Mississippi, then others can, too, so economic developers believe, and the spin-offs have enormous potential.
The Advantage Mississippi Program, a generous array of recruitment incentives managed by the Mississippi Development Authority, is one of the Legislature's and Musgrove administration's crowning achievements. It is a good package, although officials may want to review it to make sure the state remains competitive with similar incentives offered by such competitors as Alabama, Kentucky, South Carolina and Tennessee. Some attention needs to be paid to helping existing industries, too.
Word is that several other major automotive manufacturing or related businesses are currently exploring Mississippi sites. Most of this is, understandably for competitive reasons, very hush-hush.
Less than rave reviews
But the truth is Musgrove and his Mississippi Development Authority are getting less than rave reviews for their handling of another major automotive manufacturing recruitment project Hyundai. Some voices in the economic development community believe politics got in the way of the recruitment process and that some areas of the state, particularly east Mississippi and south Mississippi, did not get the attention they deserved.
Musgrove and Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., had serious disagreements over how Hyundai's recruitment unfolded. The governor consistently steered Hyundai toward a site in the central Mississippi town of Pelahatchie, much to the chagrin of Nissan, which publicly reminded the governor of a commitment it has from the state not to locate another automotive manufacturing plant in such close proximity. Development professionals elsewhere were also frustrated that Musgrove stubbornly insisted on Pelahatchie while at least eight other sites were explored, apparently to varying degrees. Nissan, which now qualifies as an existing business in Mississippi, also had serious reservations about the availability of skilled workers in such a narrow geographical area, I am told.
Hyundai has now eliminated Pelahatchie and Mississippi from its short list, and late last week denied a report in a South Korean publication that it has decided to locate the big plant in the Montgomery, Ala., area.
Political punishment'
As for politics, the governor does have a habit of trying to punish folks who don't see things his way. Such "punishment" often takes a petty, personal turn.
State Rep. Bobby Moody, D-Louisville, the House Public Welfare Committee chairman who has fought with Musgrove over Medicaid, found that out the other day when officials of Georgia-Pacific, a major employer in his Winston County district, agreed to meet on the possibility of re-opening its Louisville plywood plant. A total of about 800 direct and indirect jobs could be at stake in a county with an 11.7 percent unemployment rate.
Georgia-Pacific executives agreed to meet with a delegation from Mississippi at its Georgia headquarters, which is not at all unusual when economic developers are trying to create or salvage jobs. G-P asked the governor to come. G-P asked Moody to come. But Musgrove apparently could not make available a seat on a state plane for Moody because the governor now travels with two body guards. Moody, a key community leader whose influence could be crucial to convincing Georgia-Pacific to reopen the plant, was bumped. The trip was canceled.
The head of Georgia-Pacific's wood division then agreed to come to Moody's Capitol office last Monday and Moody arranged for a number of state legislative leaders to meet with him. That meeting was postponed and may happen this week.
Musgrove's biggest fault, in Moody's estimation, is that he "tries to tie in something else," like injecting an unrelated political agenda into an economic development project.
To an outside observer, these sorts of dumb political stunts remain a source of real irritation between lawmakers and the governor.
Musgrove's short-sighted political antics threaten to turn the MDA into the Rodney Dangerfield of economic development agencies. That would be sad and detrimental to the state's long-term economic interests.
Steering economic development projects to certain sections of the state, bumping an influential legislator from the state plane, using the "school yard bully approach"  these hardly seem signs of the magnanimity and unity demanded by the economic development process.