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Gov. Phil Bryant joined officials from Kohler Industries Tuesday to celebrate a $20 million expansion of the Wisconsin-based company’s Hattiesburg facility.

Just a few miles away, both the Forrest County Board of Supervisors and the Hattiesburg City Council held separate meetings before the governor’s news conference.

The two government bodies met to approve a settlement with Kohler that will require the county and city to reimburse it for $1.2 million in tax payments, according to a story in the Hub City Spokes.

According to Tammy Craft from the Mississippi Development Authority, Kohler will receive $2.6 million to relocate equipment and $300,000 for workforce training from state taxpayers. The city and county are providing tax exemptions and assistance for infrastructure improvements.

The company says it’ll be consolidating its North American manufacturing operations from Wisconsin to Hattiesburg, where the company will lease an additional 300,000 square feet where failed solar panel manufacturer Stion was located.

The company will continue to manufacture small, twin-cylinder engines for use in zero-turn and residential lawn mowers and the new facility is supposed to create 250 full-time jobs. The state incentives alone add up to $11,600 per job.

Stion closed its Hattiesburg operation in 2017 and still owes state and local taxpayers more than $93 million in incentives.

Kohler, Forrest County and the city of Hattiesburg reached a deal in 1996 to lure the company, which built a small engine manufacturing plant in the Forrest County Industrial Park. The city and county denied a Kohler an exemption on its taxes in the 2010 tax year after honoring it from 1998 to 2009.

Kohler sued in 2014, asking for a full refund on the taxes the company paid since 2010. The agreement says the taxpayers will pay for the settlement, interest free, over a 10-year period.

The company asked for $2 million in its lawsuit.

As Mississippi enacts a law that will allow its electric cooperatives to offer broadband service to customers, one of the state’s lawmakers also suggested the Magnolia State should follow the lead of Kentucky and issue bonds to build out statewide fiber infrastructure.

Mississippi Wired, anyone?

Despite the fact that the Bluegrass State’s Kentucky Wired is massively overbudget and way behind schedule, Mississippi state Rep. Robert Johnson (D-Natchez) oddly pointed to Kentucky’s plan as one to emulate.

Gov. Phil Bryant recently signed into law the Mississippi Broadband Enabling Act, which sailed through the 2019 legislative session.

After that bill became law, only a handful of cooperatives indicated they are ready to move forward on high-speed internet. So Johnson told Mississippi Today he’d support a state plan to issue bonds and incur debt to build out fiber in Mississippi. The state would then lease the fiber to private providers to extend the “last mile” to customers.

“It is that important to the state,” Johnson said.

Michael Callahan, CEO of the Electric Cooperative of Mississippi, said cooperatives will soon meet with consultants to research acquiring federal funds (read: taxpayer money) to aid in the broadband effort.

Brent Skorup, senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center, cautions against the wholesale model espoused by Johnson. He pointed both to UTOPIA in Provo, Utah, a financially-troubled project purchased by Google Fiber for $1 in 2013, and Kentucky Wired, which is quickly turning into a boondoggle for that state.

“It’s only public-private in the most narrow sense,” he told the Taxpayers Protection Alliance Foundation. “Taxpayers are on the hook for that project.”

Kentucky Wired was originally supposed to be up and running this year, but recent reports indicate only 1,000 of the 3,000 miles of the statewide fiber infrastructure are complete.

Kentucky State Auditor Mike Harmon released a scathing report on the project last year, calling the plan a “bait-and-switch on the taxpayers.” Kentucky residents could be on the hook for as much as $1.5 billion after state officials switched the financing of the project primarily from the private side to the public side to take advantage of tax-exempt bonds by creating the nonprofit Kentucky Wired Infrastructure Company. But a combination of project delays and expected revenues drying up are sinking any chance taxpayers have of recouping their unexpected investment.

As for cooperative broadband, Skorup said the “devil is in the details.”

He points out that such cooperatives are historically heavily subsidized by the federal government, which could hurt the business case for private providers in those areas looking to offer service.

“That could scare off unsubsidized companies in rural areas,” Skorup said.

Another common issue is cross-subsidization between power and broadband divisions, which has been observed in cities that decided to offer high-speed internet and didn’t find the business as easy as anticipated. The Mississippi bill, however, stamps that issue out by not allowing cooperatives to use electricity revenue to prop up the internet.

Skorup said electric cooperatives’ common monopoly on utility poles in rural areas is a concern. Private providers must negotiate rates for usage of those poles for their own fiber.

“I would start to worry that this would give [cooperatives] the incentive to raise the cost of access for other broadband providers,” he said.

Despite his “yea” vote on the bill, Johnson is one of a consortium of attorneys that is suing seven Mississippi electric cooperatives, claiming in the suit that those nonprofit entities aren’t returning excess revenue to their member customers.

Cities and counties could collect certain debts by garnishing state income tax refunds if a bill passed by the Mississippi legislature becomes law.

House Bill 991 would allow local governments to collect any debt or fine that’s at least $50. Different debts could also be combined to satisfy the debt threshold of $50.

The bill passed the House 86-28 back in February and it cleared the Senate by a 30-14 margin last week. It is now headed to Gov. Phil Bryant’s desk for signature.

The legislation was pushed by the Mississippi Municipal League, which said on its Facebook page that it would help reconcile thousands of unpaid municipal court fines in cities and towns throughout the state.

Under the bill, cities and counties would contact the Mississippi Department of Revenue and submit the debt owed it for collection. The local government, or a member organization on its behalf, would send written notice of the intent to the debtor to garnish part or all of their refund.

In addition to the debt, a 25 percent collection assistance fee would also be assessed.

The debtor would have 30 days to contest the garnishment and receive a hearing in front of the government. Appeals of these decisions would be made to the county circuit court.

HB 991 doesn’t explicitly mention county-owned rural hospitals, of which there are 19 in the state, but doesn’t exclude debts paid to them either.

Already, the DOR can garnish state income tax refunds to recover:

The bill was sponsored by state Rep. Jeff Smith (R-Columbus).

It made it out of the Senate Finance Committee the day before Tuesday’s deadline for general bills to make it out of committee in the opposite chamber.

Last year, there were a pair of billsthat were very similar to this year’s HB 991 for counties and municipalities and all died in committee without making it to the floor.

Two other bills regarding the garnishment of state income tax refunds for the collection of debts were also drafted.

Senate Bill 2194was signed into law and allows community colleges to get the DOR to garnish state income tax refunds for the repayment of unpaid fees or other debts.

Another bill, SB 2608, would’ve allowed public and private non-profit hospitals to do the same thing, but died on the calendar after making it out of the Senate Finance Committee.

A bill in the Mississippi legislature could give a homeowner’s association the right to levy property taxes on the residents that live there.

House Bill 1612 would authorize municipalities to create special improvement assessment districts in areas administered by home owner associations.

These 501(c)(3) organizations would 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, landscaping, lighting, fountains, security enhancements such as gates and cameras, and even the hiring of private security services.

In Mississippi, ad valorem tax is assessed at 10 percent of the value of real property.

For example, on a house with an assessed value of $250,000 in the city of Jackson, six mills of additional tax could add up to an additional $145.50 annually in property tax.

The HOA that seeks taxing authority would have to hold a public hearing with two weeks’ notice that would be advertised in a newspaper that circulates in the area.

The tax would require a referendum of the affected property owners and would require 60 percent approval by them before the district could be authorized.

The governing authority of the municipality where the district is located could dissolve it via a resolution if all activities for which the district was created were complete and no debts were outstanding in connection with the improvements.

The bill is sponsored by state Rep. Mark Baker (R-Brandon) and passed the House 93-22 on February 28 after failing to get a two-thirds majority on its first pass on the floor.

It hasn’t yet been referred to a Senate committee, but as a revenue bill, it is on a later calendar than a general bill. The deadline for floor action on appropriations and revenue bills passed out of the other chamber is March 19.

A similar bill that would only apply to HOAs in the Jackson city limits is active in the House and is similar to bills that have been killed in each of the last four legislative sessions. State Rep. Credell Calhoun (D-Jackson) is the sponsor of HB 1157, which is a local and private bill.

The old law that authorized the creation of these special improvement districts was repealed in 2001.

A majority of members in the Mississippi House voted Tuesday to add more than $173 million in bond debt to the taxpayers’ credit card.

The bill now heads to the Senate, where a companion bond bill has already passed. The difference between the two amounts to a deep chasm.

Senate Bill 3065 only has $12 million total for projects. Four-year state universities would share $10 million, community colleges would share $1 million, and Huntington Ingalls would receive $1 million.

Legislators from both chambers will have to settle the differences between the two bills in conference later this session.

The House bill’s final amount could be higher, as state Rep. Jeff Smith (R-Columbus) said Tuesday that the bill would be the vehicle to help members out with their (funding) requests.

House Bill 1674 has more than $85 million in borrowing for projects for the state’s universities, including $13 million for renovating the Cook Library at the University of Southern Mississippi and $12 million for matching funds for an expansion for the Blair E. Batson Children’s Hospital at the University of Mississippi Medical Center.

There is also $25 million for projects at the state’s community colleges.

There’s also $63 million spread over five years for restoration of historic buildings around the state. Some of these include:

The House has already voted to pass a bill that would provide $45 million to Huntington Ingalls Shipyard in Pascagoula. They have also approved several other bonds for various entities totaling over $40 million.

According to the latest Financial State of the States report released in September by the non-partisan public policy group Truth in Accounting, the state owes more than $5.8 billion in bond debt alone.

The state will also borrow $300 million for infrastructure needs after the 2018 special session.

On Tuesday, the House also passed HB 822, which passed by a 92-15 margin. This bill would levy a $400 tax on any attorney licensed to practice in Mississippi who doesn’t have a practice or lives in the state.

Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann said Monday that he would support expanding Medicaid in Mississippi if elected as lieutenant governor if the cost to taxpayers isn’t significant.

The three-term secretary of state made his remarks at the Stennis Capitol Press Forum.

“I think we can come up with something acceptable and affordable,” Hosemann said. “When we get close enough to where the cost (to state taxpayers) is not significant, that’d be something we’d consider. It needs to be where the state is not out significant amounts of money.

“The way you do that is you do accurate projections on how many people are going to be added on, what’s their cost. There are a number of different plans out there, work requirements and it’s like everything else, you start by taking each one of these steps and get it to where it’s closer to break even.”

He said the state would receive about $800 million in federal money to expand the program, which is intended to provide taxpayer-funded health insurance coverage for low income people. He also said the state match would add up to about $200 million.

Twenty four percent of all Mississippians are on Medicaid, even without the expansion which was authorized by the Affordable Care Act.

When Louisiana expanded Medicaid in 2016, projections said that 306,000 new people would enroll, but those numbers have grown exponentially to 502,055 this year. That’s a 64 percent increase.

In 2015, Louisiana’s Medicaid program served 1,313,387 residents. By October 2018, the program was serving 1,623,869 residents.

The numbers for Medicaid expansion’s cost in Mississippi by Hosemann are even higher than a previous state study on Medicaid expansion would suggest.

According to a 2012 study by the Institutes for Higher Learning, Medicaid expansion would cost state taxpayers $148.7 million in 2021 in a high enrollment scenario (95 percent participation by eligible residents), $132.6 million in a medium scenario (85 percent participation) and $124 million in a low enrollment scenario (75 percent participation).

Hosemann said the primary theme of his campaign will be an educated workforce. He said he wants the community college “embedded” in the high schools and he wants to increase the state’s 55 percent labor force participation rate by 1 percent per year.

Hosemann also said that he’d support annual teacher pay raises, “not just in an election year.”

He decried that $80 million of the projected revenue from the state’s new lottery will go to the Mississippi Department of Transportation for highway maintenance and repair under the $250 million infrastructure package passed during the June special session by the legislature.

Millennials are going crazy for the Green New Deal. Some say it’s more popular than Instagram and more influential than the Top 40, but one thing’s for sure; it has everybody talking. It’s just that those conversations might not be what the Democratic Party was expecting.

Maybe telling people their truck has got to go, air travel should become a thing of the past, nearly all the buildings in the United States need to be remodeled, and cow flatulence is now punishable by the force of law got people’s attention? President Donald Trump’s line “it sounds like a high school term paper” was an accurate description of how many of us view the green tropes of the new progressives.

Championed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Sen. Ed Markley of Massachusetts, the idea of an earth free from climate change touched the hearts of those on the left and led the majority of Democratic presidential candidates to endorse the idea without reading the fine print…or the second sentence. Never mind the fact that the earth has always been and forever will be susceptible to changes in the climate and our attempts to eliminate this design from Washington, D.C. reflect a supreme arrogance.

The rewards for the supporters of the New Green Deal? Money for those unwilling to work, justice on behalf of the marginalized, no more gasoline and no more pesticides – all for the low cost of a couple trillion dollars. Lucky for those presidential hopefuls and political leaders alike who aspire for the deal, they’ll have a chance to vote on the measure thanks to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. No doubt a vote for the New Green Deal will demonstrate to the true believers how committed they are to a green planet and all the social justice attached thereto.

If you listen to much of the mainstream media you’ll often hear that the future of our country rests with the millennials cheering on the Green New Deal, people like Reps. Ocasio-Cortez or Ilhan Omar of Minnesota. “The presidency of Trump and the GOP’s electoral success in recent years is nothing more than a fluke,” Omar insists. According to the young progressives now pushing the New Green Deal, the future belongs to the millennial who is well versed in the merits of socialism, the philosophy of social justice, and environmental activism.

These notions wouldn’t be out of place on NPR or MSNBC. The radical left has been making similar arguments for decades. Now, such progressive policy positions are creeping into the mainstream of a party, which seeks to control the White House.

The Green New Deal is preposterous on its face. However, despite being doomed to fail, it does provide a window into how the highly educated, coastal, liberal elite in America think. Solutions which amount to the complete deconstruction of the American economy in an effort to cure the environment and combat social justice sounds radical to the average American, yet at elite universities, the coffee shops of urban cities, and the newsrooms of media’s upper echelon, the Green Deal  is Avant Garde. It is woke. It is hip. In short, it is the new black.

Despite the mainstream media’s fascination and coronation of AOC and her tribe, polling shows millennials as a whole don’t want a Green New Deal, a 70% marginal tax rate, the recognition of infinite genders, or the abolition of national borders. Despite the Democratic Party moving towards progressivism and the Republican Party moving towards statist cronyism, the people of America still want a representative republic where ideas like individual liberty, free markets, limited government, and personal responsibility reign.

If coastal elitists want to understand how those of us in “fly over country” feel about a world without trucks, grilled meat, or homecoming queens, I suggest they attend a tailgate at an Ole Miss or Mississippi State game day this fall and ask around. It’s a pretty safe bet there will be more than a couple of enthusiastic answers.

Mississippi taxpayers, both at the state and local levels, often provide rafts of incentives to lure new industry to a community and “create” jobs.

The Mississippi Development Authority has several infrastructure and job training grant programs and tax incentives that include rebates on income tax paid by employees. Counties can offer tax breaks on property taxes, which support local schools and other local government services.

Here are some of the more recent examples, with calculations on how much the incentives cost per job.

Krone

According to a story from Memphis TV station WREG, Mississippi taxpayers will be paying a heavy price in grants and tax incentives to get a German agricultural implement company to move its North American headquarters and 45 jobs across the state line from Memphis to Olive Branch.

Mississippi will provide a $7.3 million in property and inventory tax breaks, in addition to a $250,000 grant to relocate its equipment. Krone could also receive incentives that rebate some income taxes for its employees to the company, provided the workers are paid at least $37,521 annually.

That could add up to $675,000 annually over the next decade.

All of those incentives, if realized, could add up to $8,225,000 or about $182,777 per job.

Amazon

Amazon announced in December that it will be building a fulfillment center in Marshall County in north Mississippi. The 554,000-square-foot center will employ 850 with a $15 per hour minimum wage and these employees will pick, pack and ship household consumer goods to customers.

Mississippi taxpayers will provide a $2 million grant for construction assistance and a $4 million grant for road improvements, according to MDA spokeswoman Tammy Craft. Marshall County will provide about $6.3 million in assistance for road improvements and a property tax exemption.

All of those incentives, if realized, could add up to $12.3 million or about $14,470 per job.

Enviva

Enviva and Mississippi officials announced 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, according to Craft. 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.

Counting the jobs of loggers and truckers not directly employed at the George County pellet mill, that figure shrinks to $43,589 per job.

The Huntington Ingalls shipyard in Pascagoula could be getting another handout from state taxpayers.

House Bill 983 would provide Huntington Ingalls Industries with $45 million from state bonds. The bill says the funds are for capital improvements, investments and upgrades for the shipyard.

The bill passed the full House and is now headed for the Senate.

This isn’t the first time legislators have borrowed money on the taxpayers’ credit card to fund improvements as the shipyard, as the state has borrowed $307 million for Ingalls improvements since 2004.

Last year, the legislature added $45 million to fund improvements at the shipyard to the “Christmas Tree” bond bill for various items.

Huntington Ingalls Industries received $45 million in 2017 from state taxpayers, $45 million in 2016, $20 million in 2015, $56 million in 2008, $56 million in 2005 and $40 million in 2004.

The company leases the land for its Pascagoula shipyard from the state and is exempt from property taxes. It is one of south Mississippi’s largest employers, with 11,000 workers.

Huntington Ingalls’ Pascagoula yard builds Arleigh Burke class destroyers, America class amphibious warfare ships, San Antonio class amphibious dock ships for the Navy and the Legend class national security cutter for the U.S. Coast Guard.

The yard is also competing to build the Navy’s next frigate and several new Coast Guard heavy icebreakers.

Ingalls also has a shipyard in Newport News, Virginia that builds Gerald Ford class aircraft carriers and Virginia class submarines. The company earned $8.2 billion in revenue in 2018 and was awarded $9.8 billion in new contracts in 2018, bringing the company’s total contract backlog to $23 billion.

Contract awards for Ingalls in the fourth quarter of 2018 included a $931 million contract for the construction of the 10th and 11th Legend class cutters and an $883 million contract for construction of an Arleigh Burke class destroyer. The yard also received a $1.4 billion contract for another San Antonio class ship.

Ingalls spent $202,400 on lobbying efforts at the Legislature in 2018. You can find the reports from the Secretary of State’s website here and here.

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