Was it the income taxes?

Despite over a year of economic courtship, a $1.2B plant is not coming to Mississippi, but has decided to pack up its "office" and head to Louisiana.

According to the Mississippi Business Journal, American Specialty Alloys would have produced 2,000 construction jobs followed with 450 to 650 jobs paying an average of $85,000 a year.

Governor Phil Bryant's good friend Governor Bobby Jindal and the Louisiana Department of Economic Development undercut whatever bill of goods the Mississippi Development Authority was offering. And since MDA basically operates in secret, we may never know if it was the deal, or if it was our education and healthcare systems that scared them off.

While Louisiana is no high-ranker in education and healthcare scores, they do consistently outrank Mississippi, including actual funding of public schools. And, last I checked, Louisiana hasn't passed a bill to eliminate over $1 billion of income from their state's annual budget.

But, MS GOP Chairman Joe Nosef and the Governor, they've got this.

No jobs anytime soon for Port of the Future

PEER released their highly-anticipated report last Friday on the Port of Gulfport, and, as suspected, it doesn't look good.

According to the report, the Port of Gulfport, is not on track to meet any of the job creation goals set forth when MDA requested a waiver with HUD to divert money from affordable housing, and the earliest projections of meeting those goals lie somewhere around 2035.

When the waiver was granted in 2007, a goal of 5,400 total jobs, 2,586 of which were anticipated to be permanent direct maritime jobs, was set. According to PEER, this would be a total increase of 2200 jobs (and increase of 530 direct maritime jobs) over pre-Katrina levels. Additionally, plans and procedures to hire low-income and moderate income employees were to be developed.

But the report describes a rather bleak situation. Before Katrina hit, 2,058 people were employed in direct maritime jobs. In 2007, 1,286 people were employed in direct maritime jobs. Today, that number sits at 1,113. And, this number may actually be overly estimated according to the International Longshoremen's Association, taking the real total possibly as low as 785.

While we've been told these jobs are coming within three years of the ports completion date (reported as 2015 in the PEER report and since changed to 2016), MDA has been telling HUD since 2012 its more realistic prediction of 2035. And while MDA is under a directive from HUD to make jobs available to low and moderate-income individuals, HUD has found no evidence that MDA is complying with this stipulation.

Facts are facts and numbers are numbers - Mississippi is building a Port to Nowhere, and we're losing jobs doing it.

Disputed Port Report to be Released Tomorrow

Last Spring, PEER was asked to review the Port of Gulfport. Who knows if PEER director Dr. Max Arinder thought it was just another day in the office, but whatever they wrote in that report did not make the Governor, MDA, or the folks at the State Port Authority Board very happy. Brent Christensen (MDA Executive Director) and Jim Simpson (MSPA President) fired off an 8-page critique of the unreleased report this summer after claiming PEER did not complete the task as requested and ignored MDA's input. And the Governor's office has made many a comment about the report's inaccuracies. 

Dr. Arinder, however, has stood by the 71 page report, which was subsequently held up through the summer.

But, after several inquisitive articles, a few concerned editorials (here, and here), and a protest this week, the PEER committee voted to release the report on Friday (September 13).

There are several minor and technical items in the 8-page letter from MDA & MSPA, but the most important issue for both sides is job creation, which was the main excuse and reasoning behind diverting the HUD money in the first place. From the letter, it seems MDA & MSPA do not think PEER reported an accurate reflection of current and future job prospects. With the closing of Ingalls facility in Gulfport, an unfavorable PEER report wouldn't help ease concerns about job creation on the Coast.

It could be assumed the 8-page letter was meant to undermine PEER's report since MDA has the ability to send out a letter without approval from anyone, while PEER has to wait for a committee vote before reports are released and cannot defend itself without releasing the contents of the report. The effect, however, has only been an increased demand to know what's in PEER's report and have a clear picture on job creation and the Port.  

Unless someone gets a copy earlier, we'll just have to wait until tomorrow to see what all the fuss is about. 

Peeling the Onion Layers Back on Nuclear Dump Plan

Friday's news about a proposal for Mississippi to house the country's nuclear waste gives us an opportunity to peel back the onion layers of this situation to see why we're seeing such quick movement to approve this plan brought to us by the Mississippi Energy Institute.

First, we found out late Friday that a state Senate committee meeting on this topic will take place Monday which will be followed by meetings with industry leaders and Congressmen Nunnelee and Harper. Notably absent from the attendee list is Congressman Palazzo. The work will take place in his district so it is puzzling that he is not there to hear more about the plan. In one respect, it makes sense for Palazzo to not be there. Palazzo has gone on record that he is willing to risk a government shutdown if he can't get his way on health care reform. So, why Nunnelee and Harper? Nunnelee makes sense because he is on the House Appropriations Committee, the committee that will allocate resources necessary to help fund the project. As a reminder, this is federal spending we're talking about. Harper, well, I'm not quite sure what the three-term Congressman's purpose at the meeting will be. Perhaps his function will become clearer in time. Will tea party representatives be present at the committee meeting objecting to this expense of federal funds? If not, why not?

Second, a spokesman for Governor Bryant said that "the governor continues to look at other nuclear opportunities and is interested in learning more about this." Those comments are somewhat confusing. Has the governor been briefed on this issue? For a project of this magnitude, it seems odd that the governor hasn't been more vocal about it. The governor travels the state for ribbon cuttings whenever he can, but on this, he has been radio silent. The Mississippi Development Authority Executive Director, Brent Christensen, serves on the Board of Directors for the Mississippi Energy Institute. From the comments of the governor's office, it seems that Christensen has not met with Bryant on this project. It begs the question: "Is someone asleep at the wheel over there?"

Third, the project itself. In 2007, there were plans to use salt domes around Hattiesburg to store petroleum as part of the national Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Over the course of five years, 50 million gallons of water a day from the Pascagoula River would be pumped into a cavern to hollow out a salt dome. Again, that's 50 million gallons of water a day for five years. Once that water was utilized, that waste product would be transported back to the Gulf Coast to be dumped into the open water. Due to the large salination increase, biologists were alarmed that nothing could survive in such salty water. Fisheries around Pascagoula would have been hit the hardest as shrimp and fish die in the water or move off to less contaminated waters. In 2011, that plan was abandoned.

With all the work that had gone on between 2007-2011, why didn't Governor Barbour push to have nuclear waste moved to Mississippi once the petroleum storage plan was cancelled? Perhaps Barbour recognized that suggesting Mississippi store nuclear waste would be a fight that even he could not win. Yet here we are in 2013 with the same proposal and a different product.

Fourth, news of this story broke the same week that the Public Service Commissioner for the Southern District resigned. Coincidence?

This is a huge project with serious economic and environmental implications. We are the early days in what is likely to be a very nasty fight that will go well beyond partisanship. Scrutiny will only increase as the public becomes more aware, especially along the southern part of the state where this is relatively fresh on residents' memories. Will Gulf Coast communities be willing to place their own economies in danger for the benefit of this project?

Looking for Some Good News?

It seems that this current legislature has encouraged a sort of “dark tone” around Cottonmouth lately, so it’s always nice to be able to bring attention to a bill that isn't going to be mocked by Stephen Colbert.

In that vein, I hope everyone takes a look at Sen. Blount’s (D-Jackson) bill regarding transparency in the Mississippi Development Authority. Which would require reports on what incentives are offered to bring businesses to our state.

Says Senator Blount:  

There are times when we need economic incentives to attract a proven company like Nissan or Toyota. However, no incentives or tax credits are free. They impact the state budget and our ability to provide essential services from schools to health care to criminal prosecutors. We need an effective means of tracking and measuring all incentives and tax credits to make sure our decisions are in the state’s best interest.

Good on Senator Blount, and I hope we see some more movement on this issue.