A stud welding company will be receiving funding from state taxpayers, plus other tax incentives, to relocate a facility from Illinois to Clarksdale.

Image Industries will relocate to the former Metso facility in Clarksdale, where it will manufacture threaded weld studs, shear connectors, concrete anchors, hydraulic weld ports and cable management studs.

According to Mississippi Development Authority spokesperson Tammy Craft, the state will provide:

• $300,000 grant for relocating equipment.
• $500,000 grant for building renovations.

The company is expected to invest $3 million and create 50 jobs. From 2012 to 2017, taxpayers have spent $678 million in just MDA grants alone from 2012 to 2017.

The company will also participate in the Growth and Prosperity Program, which is designed to encourage economic growth in impoverished parts of the state. To qualify for the program, a county must have an unemployment rate that is 200 percent of the state’s annual unemployment rate or have 30 percent or more of its population below the federal poverty line.

This program allows a participating entity that relocates or expands in a GAP-qualified area to receive:

• A full exemption on all state income and franchise taxes related to the new location.
• A full sales and use tax exemption on all equipment and machinery purchased during initial construction. This exemption lasts from the project inception until three months after startup.
• A property tax exemption for taxes levied on land, buildings, equipment and some inventory at a facility in a GAP area. The exemption doesn’t include school taxes or the portion of the ad valorem taxes that pay for fire and police protection.

These incentives can last for up to 10 years after authorization. The GAP-eligible counties are Adams, Bolivar, Claiborne, Coahoma, Holmes, Humphreys, Issaquena, Jefferson, Leflore, Noxubee, Oktibbeha, Quitman, Sharkey, Sunflower, Tallahatchie, Tunica, Washington and Yazoo. 

There are also areas of Adams, Amite, Attala, Franklin and Lowndes counties that are also part of the GAP program.

A planned Enviva wood pellet mill cleared a big regulatory hurdle, as the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality approved its air pollution permit at its meeting Tuesday.

The permit board’s unanimous decision came after a contentious May public hearing in Lucedale and a comment period that was extended from the required 30 days to 61 days by MDEQ officials. 

The plant, which could be the largest wood pellet plant in the nation, is designed to manufacture 1,420,500 oven-dried tons of wood pellets, which can be used to fuel overseas power plants, such as in Great Britain.

Maryland-based Enviva has seven mills in the Southeast and one of those mills is in Amory, acquired in August 2010. 

When MDEQ staff was asked about complaints from dust emissions produced by the Amory facility, they said there had been some complaints over dust. The Amory plant was originally built by CKS Energy in 2007 and acquired by Enviva in 2010. 

They also said the new Lucedale facility would have better emissions control equipment to mitigate the 250 possible tons per year of volatile organic compounds, particulates of less than 10 microns in diameter and smaller particles of less than 2.5 microns in diameter. 

Two of the audience members spoke about the pellet plant. Frank Figures, a local resident and opponent of the plant, says that the plant will be allowed to be periodically bypass its emissions controls. 

MDEQ said the plant would be allowed to do that 50 hours annually for plant startup/shutdown operations. 

Former Lucedale mayor Doug Lee said he supported the plant and thought it’d be a positive for George County.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality and Enviva reached a settlement this year in a lawsuit filed by the Southern Environmental Law Center and Environmental Integrity Project to add more pollution controls and reduce emissions by 95 percent from Enviva’s wood pellet plant in Richmond County, North Carolina.

Enviva and Mississippi officials announced in January that the company — which makes wood pellets that fuel overseas power plants — will build a $140 million pellet mill and a $60 million loading terminal at the port in Pascagoula.

Enviva is expected to hire 90 employees in Lucedale, with 300 loggers and truckers possibly finding work supplying logs to the company.

Mississippi taxpayers will be providing $4 million in grant funds, with $1.4 million for a water well and a water tank, while the other $2.5 million is for other infrastructure needs and site working. George County will provide $13 million in property tax breaks over the next 10 years.

All of those incentives, if realized, could add up to $17 million or about $188,888 per job.

These wood pellets are made from low-grade wood fiber unsuitable for lumber because of small size, defects, disease or pest infestation; parts of trees that can’t be processed into lumber and chips, sawdust and other residue. 

The Lucedale plant will mill, dry and pellet the wood in a press, using natural polymers in the wood called lignin to act as a natural glue.

As the Hemp Cultivation Task Force kicks off their work, Mississippi now finds itself on an island as the only state in the Southeast where the cultivation of hemp is illegal.

This year, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas joined the ranks of states legalizing industrial hemp. As states continue to move in that direction, Mississippi is sitting with just Idaho, Ohio, and South Dakota among the only states in the nation where hemp remains illegal.

The South Dakota legislature Ok’d hemp legalization earlier this year, but it was vetoed by Gov. Kristi Noem.    

Cultivation of hemp for commercial, research, or pilot programs

We have seen a massive move toward hemp legalization at the state level after the 2018 Farm Bill expanded the cultivation of hemp. Previously, federal law did not differentiate hemp from other cannabis plants, even though you can’t get high from hemp. Because of this, it was essentially made illegal. But we did have pilot programs or limited purpose small-scale program for hemp, largely for research. 

Now, hemp cultivation is much broader, with the Farm Bill allowing the transfer of hemp across state lines, with no restrictions on the sale, transport, or possession of hemp-derived products. There are still limitations, but most states have taken the opportunity to find new markets for those who would like to cultivate hemp. 

The message from Marshall Fisher, the commissioner of the Department of Public Safety, at yesterday’s first meeting of the task force was that we can’t do this. It’s not regulated enough, there is a link between hemp and fentanyl, and we will see more people being buried if we move in this direction. And law enforcement can’t tell the difference between hemp and cannabis. 

We don’t know what the task force will recommend. It includes both supporters and opponents. And of course, the legislature – who will be tasked with acting on any recommendations – will be different next year. 

But, if we have questions on whether or not hemp leads to chaos in the streets, we can just look to 46 other states.

Revenue from sports betting continues to decline in Mississippi as the slow season for betting continues a couple months before football resumes.

Taxable revenue for the month of May totaled just under $1.2 million, down from around $2 million in April. In March, revenues were just under $4.9 million, a far outlier from recent trends, thanks to the college basketball tournament. January and February hovered between $2.7 and $2.8 million. 

The biggest win for Mississippi’s casino-only sports betting industry, however, was Louisiana’s inability to pass their own legislation which would have legalized sports betting in Pelican State casinos and race tracks. The proposed legislation would have required local referendums in each parish, but it died on the last day of the session.

Lawmakers will not meet again until next March.

Other neighboring states

In Arkansas, sports betting became legal last week. Last November, voters approved a ballot initiative legalizing sports betting and the Oaklawn Racing Casino Resort in Hot Springs, is the first to welcome betters. While the timeline is still to be determined, a casino closer to home, Southland Gaming & Racing in West Memphis, is expected to begin collecting wagers soon. Competition has swallowed a lot of the revenue Mississippi once experienced, and this would likely add further pains to Tunica area sports betting operations.

Tennessee could also add to those pains, but they have some work to do. The state passed an online-only sports betting bill earlier this year, but it has many issues – requiring sportsbooks to buy official league data to settle in-play wagers, a very expensive entry point and high taxes, and a ban on prop bets in NCAA games. Much work remains before the Volunteer State is taking bids. 

Legislation was introduced in Alabama this year, but it did not move and most consider sports betting a long-shot with our neighbors to the east.

Department of Public Safety Commissioner Marshall Fisher attempted to link the cultivation of hemp and laboratory-created synthetic cannabinoids (often known as spice) laced with the opioid fentanyl in testimony Monday.

Fisher made the remarks in reference to the lack of quality control over cannabidiol (CBD oil) products, which is being researched as a possible seizure-arresting medication at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in addition to use in dietary supplements.

 “There’s no vetting process that I’m aware of whether these (CBD) products are actually perused by anybody before they’re put out there,” Fisher said. “There’s story after story, anecdotal stories out here on the streets and in the papers about the spice and the deaths. 

“There’s no quality control with people selling this as narcotics. You have bodies all over this country, people in funeral homes and cemeteries who’ve died of fentanyl overdoses because of fentanyl being mixed with other drugs.” 

Listen to audio of Fisher

He was speaking at the first Hemp Cultivation Task Force meeting at the state Capitol. The task force was created by House Bill 1547 to study the potential for cultivation of hemp, how to regulate it and its possible effects on the state’s economy. A report of recommendations issued by the task force is due to Gov. Phil Bryant by December 6.

Task Force chairman Andy Gipson, the state’s agriculture commissioner, said that he wants the report to be well thought out and evidence based. He also said the group will consider the challenges and opportunities that hemp can present the state.

Hemp is the same Cannabis sativa plant that is marijuana, but the difference is the amount of the psychoactive substance Tetrahydrocannabinol, also known as THC. According to the farm bill passed by Congress in 2018, hemp is defined as strains of the cannabis plant with a THC level of 0.3 percent or less.

Don’t expect any discussion of legalized marijuana at the task force meetings, because Gipson said the task force won’t be engaging in any other issues other than those related to hemp cultivation.

Fisher said one of the problems for law enforcement is that they can’t tell the difference between hemp and marijuana, barring a chemical test to deduce the THC content that would have to be done in the state’s crime lab. 

He says the lab is 400 drug exhibits behind every month because it is short staffed and underfunded.

Hemp can be used to manufacture products such as textiles, rope, insulation and animal feed, while it can also be grown for CBD oil extraction.

A large contingent of farmers on hand were supportive of the chance to help build a market for hemp. 

“As a producer, I’d like to see hemp be allowed to be raised so that farmers would have the option of another crop in their rotation,” said Paul Dees, who represents the Delta Council on the task force and is a farmer himself.

According to the Michael Ledlow, the director of the Bureau of Plant Industry at the state Department of Agriculture and Commerce, hemp has no herbicides or pesticides certified for use with it by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Dr. Richard Summers, who is the associated vice chancellor for research at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, told the task force that the small amount of clinical trials into CBD oil’s effects on childhood seizures have enjoyed some positive results. 

He said that the 10 young patients, all of whom had seizures that didn’t respond to traditional therapies, went three to four months without a single issue while using CBD oil produced at Ole Miss as a treatment.

Summers did offer that caveat that the sample size isn’t enough to draw a conclusion on CBD oil’s possible medical uses or safety and that the center plans to continue its research after being granted an extension by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

He said the goal was to develop a commercial CBD oil product for treatment of seizures.

Cultivation of hemp for commercial, research, or pilot programs

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 46 states allow the cultivation of hemp for commercial, research or pilot programs. In fact, Mississippi is the only Southern state where the cultivation of hemp is illegal after a handful of states legalized it earlier this year.

The task force will meet again on September 25 at 10 a.m. There were four committees created at the meeting:

• Regulations and monitoring
• Economics, market and job creation
• Hemp agronomy
• Law enforcement

The four committees will submit reports at the next task force meeting. 

If you’ve had an opportunity to check the news recently, you might have noticed a lot a talk about Ole Miss. And we’re not talking about their latest purchase of $4,500 trash cans. Though, that certainly should raise a few eyebrows. 

It has now been roughly 230 or so days since Jeffrey Vitter announced his resignation as Chancellor of the University of Mississippi, making him the first person ever to resign his post, and in turn triggering a leadership vacuum.  

With the departure, both state and local media have spent a great deal of time talking about who is in the hunt for the chancellorship. Yet not much has been written or said about what the candidates want to achieve.   

The question the IHL, students, alumni, and facility should be asking those who seek the chancellorship is not what’s on their resume but what does their Ole Miss look like?  

The university finds itself at a critical juncture – between the solidification of the progressive academic movement, centered on political correctness and multiculturalism, that has dominated the school for the last few years –and the real kind of progress in terms of academic rigor and freedom, diversity of thought and speech, citizenship, enrollment, and culture.   

Going into this next academic year, Ole Miss will no longer be under NCAA sanctions, will be entering into its second year of being in the top half of one percent of research institutions, and will still be healing from the wounds inflicted by the demonstrations (related to Confederate monuments) which took place last April.  

If any man or woman earnestly seeks to carry this office with the style, grace, acumen, humility, and effectiveness of former chancellors, then that potential leader should be communicating a bold plan for the future of Ole Miss. Such a plan should not include following the modern script of the edutocracy. Today’s academies of higher education suffer from many self-imposed wounds. America is losing faith in the value of sending its next generation of civic and business leaders to college. Reversing that dangerous trend is going to require someone with a clear vison but also with the intestinal fortitude to withstand the slings and arrows of the higher education establishment.

The university needs now, more than ever, a chancellor who holds a deep reverence for the school’s traditions and institutions as well as the opinions of its students and alumni. This chancellor will need to possess practical ideas for turning around declining enrollment, for increasing the number of in-state students, for strengthening academic programs across the board, and for creating an environment where free expression is preserved and cherished. 

Ole Miss has the potential to be far greater than a mere punchline in the jokes made by the state’s political class. All it really needs is strong leadership. We’ve been there before. But strong leadership is in such short supply, especially if that leader is also required to bring terminal degrees and a publishing pedigree. 

The search of the next chancellor isn’t just about whether the IHL picks someone who is qualified. There is no shortage of well-credentialed, academic administration careerists. I’m sure the list of qualified candidates is long and distinguished.

The most important qualification right now should be about a candidate’s vision for Ole Miss. What can it become? What should its graduates know? What principals and ideas underpin the institution in such a way that a degree is unmistakably valuable and unique? The people of the state of Mississippi, the alumni, the faculty, the students, and even the world, await the results of this incredibly important hire. 

So what will Ole Miss become? 

Mississippi won’t have to repay a $570 million Community Development Block grant given to the state after Hurricane Katrina, but most of the jobs created at the Port of Gulfport were low income and employment actually shrunk at the port itself compared with pre-Katrina levels.

Gov. Phil Bryant’s office recently announced that the U.S. Department Housing and Urban Development had closed its review of the Mississippi Development Authority and jobs created at the Port of Gulfport after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

HUD provided a $570 million Community Development Block grant to the MDA for the port for repairs and upgrades such as wharf crane rail upgrades, ship channel dredging and delivery and installation of three ship to shore rail mounted container cranes, a project that wasn’t completed until 2018. 

Under the conditions of the grant, the port was supposed to maintain 1,300 jobs and add 1,300 more workers once renovations were complete in 2016, 11 years after the storm. Fifty one percent were to be made available for those with low or moderate incomes.

Of those jobs, 1,167 came from a casino hotel that leases land from the port authority. HUD allowed the MDA to count jobs added at the Island View as part of its requirements under the CDBG grant. The agency also assisted the MDA in recalculating hours worked by the employees so they could be counted as full time under the conditions of the grant. 

The state said that the port had 2,085 maritime employees prior to Hurricane Katrina and that number shrank to 1,286 by 2007. A study by the Stennis Institute that was attached to the governor’s news release said that the port and its tenants directly employed 1,121 personnel and generated $425 million for the local economy.

“HUD’s $570-million investment after Hurricane Katrina was invaluable to Mississippi,” Bryant said in a news release. “I’m proud to say that we’ve met the low and moderate income national objective for CDBG funds. This would not be possible without the effort from our federal and local partners.”

The Stennis study also blamed the Great Recession from 2007 to 2009 and the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill for the downturn in economic activity for having an effect on the Port of Gulfport’s operations after Katrina.

In August 2013, HUD issued a finding on the port reconstruction that criticized the state for inadequate recordkeeping in complying with the low- and moderate-income job requirements. 

A report issued in September 2013 by the Joint Legislative Committee on Performance Evaluation and Expenditure Review (PEER Committee) predicted that the port would be unable to meet its job creation requirements by the deadline.

In 2017, the MDA told HUD officials that additional jobs had been created in the expansion of the Island View Resort. HUD examined records and found that 18 percent of the 112 new hires sampled were duplicative or employees had been rehired and counted twice and 25 percent of them never worked full time.

HUD met with MDA and port officials in August 2018 to discuss progress with complying with the job creation requirements. HUD found that only 588 jobs had been created, far short of the 1,200 jobs that were supposed to be added according to the state’s plan.

MDA also used a new methodology for counting full-time jobs at Island View toward the goal, converting part-time positions using hours worked into full-time equivalent positions.

The port has added some new tenants, such as McDermott International, Sea One and Chemours, and brought back fruit company Chiquita in 2016, which relocated in 2014 to New Orleans.

Edison Chouest subsidiary Top Ship was supposed to receive $36 million in state funds to open a shipyard on property on the Industrial Canal owned by the port and employ 1,000 workers that would count toward the HUD total. The deal was scuttled in December after Top Ship wasn’t able to meet the investment or job creation requirements.

Most of the 366 bills passed by the Mississippi legislature in this year’s session and signed by Gov. Phil Bryant become law on July 1.

Here’s everything of interest that is now law:

Good bills that became law

House Bill 1205 prohibits state agencies from requesting or releasing donor information on charitable groups organized under section 501 of federal tax law. The bill was sponsored by state Rep. Jerry Turner (R-Baldwyn).

HB 1352 is sponsored by state Rep. Jason White (R-West) and is known as the Criminal Justice Reform Act. The bill eliminates obstacles for the formerly incarcerated to find work, prevents driver’s license suspensions for controlled substance violations and unpaid legal fees and fines and updates drug court laws to allow for additional types of what are known as problem solving courts. 

SB 2781, known as Mississippi Fresh Start Act, was sponsored by state Sen. John Polk (R-Hattiesburg). This bill eliminated the practice of “good character” or “moral turpitude” clauses from occupational licensing regulations, which prohibit ex-felons from receiving an occupational license and starting a new post-incarceration career. 

The bill died for a time in the Senate on March 28, when the first conference report was rejected by the Senate. However, a motion to reconsider kept the bill alive and it was recommitted for further conference. The resulting second compromise was accepted by both chambers on the session’s final day and was signed into law by Gov. Phil Bryant.

SB 2901, known as the Landowner Protection Act, exempts property owners and their employees from civil liability if a third party injures someone else on their property. 

The bill was sponsored by state Sen. Josh Harkins (R-Flowood). The version signed by the governor on March 29 allows civil litigation against property owners due to negligence based on the condition of the property or activities on the property where an injury took place. This was a major point of contention during debate over the bill.

HB 1613, also known as the Children’s Promise Act, allows an $8 million income tax credit for donations to charitable organizations that help children in need. The credit would increase the cap on individual tax credits from $1 million to $3 million and create a $5 million business tax credit.

Senate Concurrent Resolution 596 made Mississippi the 15th state to call for a Convention of the States authorized under Article V of the U.S. Constitution. The resolution was approved by the Senate and passed the House on March 27.

For a Convention of the States to occur, 34 state legislatures would have to pass similar resolutions.

Ugly bills that became law

HB 1612 authorized municipalities to create special improvement assessment districts that will be authorized to levy up to 6 mills of property tax (the amount per $1,000 of assessed value of the property) to fund parks, sidewalks, streets, planting, lighting, fountains, security enhancements and even private security services. The tax will require the approval of 60 percent of property owners in the district.

The Senate amended the bill so it only applies to Jackson (cities with a population of 150,000 or more).

SB 2603 reauthorized motion picture and television production incentives for non-resident employees that expired in 2017. The bill, as originally written, capped incentives to out-of-state production companies at $10 million. This was reduced in conference to $5 million and it was signed by the governor on March 28.

HB 1283 is better known as the "Mississippi School Safety Act of 2019.” Controversially, it requires school districts to develop and conduct an active shooter drill within the first 60 days of the start of each semester. 

It also establishes a monitoring center connected with federal data systems with three regional analysts monitoring social media for threats. 

The bill also creates a pilot program for six school districts with a curriculum for children in kindergarten through fifth grade with “skills for managing stress and anxiety.” The pilot plan would be federally funded.