A letter about jobs

Dear Gov. Holden:

Thank you for your invitation to the "Jobs Summit" you're hosting tomorrow (March 3) at the mansion. I'll see you there.

The subject is timely. In December, your administration published a report informing us that Missouri is one of a handful of states that remains in recession. Your administration also informed us of the grim news on the jobs front: That Missouri leads the nation in job loss. In August, your department of economic development told us we had lost 77,000 jobs over the last year or more; in November, that we had lost 90,000 jobs; and early this year, that the number had topped 100,000. Sadly, "We're number one!"

I have an idea or two. I have personally been involved in efforts these last 27 months or so to bring in hundreds of millions of dollars of investment to our state, only to watch, stunned, as your Department of Natural Resources ran these companies, the jobs and the investments they wanted to make here, out of Missouri. More than one business executive has told me, "Thanks for your efforts, senator, but after all these months of frustration, and money spent to no avail, we are going to other states that are more hospitable to investment."

Governor, this is happening all over this state on your watch. Will this be addressed at your "summit"?

I am personally aware of another $160 million of investment by a world-class, industry-leading corporation that is imperiled because DNR apparently can't process the necessary permit application fast enough. Will this be on the agenda at your "summit"?

Workers compensation: I dare you to go speak with the folks at the Southwest Area Manufacturing Association in Springfield, as I did in January. They will tell you that their uncontrollable costs have brought about a crisis in their ability to expand -- even to survive -- as manufacturers in Missouri. First among their problems is the spiraling cost of workers compensation insurance. You didn't even mention this subject in your State-of-the-State message in January.

Or go down I-44 to visit with the good folks at CFI Trucking in Joplin, the 11th largest freight hauler in America. They'll tell you, as they did me, that were they to locate in Arkansas, their workers comp costs would be 36 percent lower, while in nearby Oklahoma, the same costs would be 40 percent lower. CFI has been in Missouri for more than 60 years, but I have a question for you and for your fellow executive-branch summiteers: As for the new CFIs, and the small, entrepreneurial, promising manufacturers of the 21st Century --- where are they choosing to locate, now?

House Republicans did the tough work of passing a workers comp reform bill, and we will take it up and try to pass it. At the mansion, week before last, the Senate minority leader of your fellow Democrats told a group of newspaper editors and publishers he addressed, along with you and me, that he would fight us tooth and nail in our attempts to enact this desperately needed reform.

Taxes: I wonder what the producers across our state think of your proposal, in your State-of-the-State speech, that we enact $3 in higher taxes for every $1 of supposed spending cuts. Why don't you ask them at the "summit," if indeed anyone not on the government payroll has been invited? By the way, can you cite me an economist anywhere who says the answer to an economy in recession is sharply higher taxes?

Tort reform: Again, the House has passed a bill that we will attempt to pass through the Senate. Your director of insurance has said there is no problem that needs a legislative solution which, I suppose, presages the veto that will ensue should we somehow succeed in overcoming the opposition of your party to pass the bill. Tell that to the OB-Gyn docs who are quitting the delivery of babies, or the surgeons whose malpractice insurance rates are doubling and quadrupling, and who are looking to leave Missouri.

Will any of these government-imposed obstacles to job creation be on the agenda? Come to think of it, as I'm writing this Friday morning, Feb. 28, I'm going to pick up the phone and call some of the business leaders I'm referring to, in order to invite them, so they can give you the earful I've been hearing during your entire tenure in office.

Peter Kinder is the assistant to the chairman of Rust Communications and president pro tem of the Missouri Senate.