Published: August 01, 2007 02:22 pm      

Barbour discusses State’s future

Gov. Haley Barbour was at the Neshoba County Fair on Friday speaking with local media.

On the balcony of the cabin amidst the noise and heat Gov. Barbour answered questions presented to him by local reporters for about an hour.

Gov. Barbour can you elaborate on the automotive industry in Mississippi?

The center of the Southern automotive manufacturing zone has been moving south and west for ten years and Mississippi is right in the center of it.

When you consider Tupelo with the Toyota plant, Canton with the Nissan plant, Montgomery with the Honda plant, and Tuscaloosa with the Mercedes plant, you can see for east Mississippi you can supply Tupelo, Canton, Tuscaloosa and Montgomery. You have an interial logistic board that makes it much more efficient to try to sell to four companies. When Nissan came here, a lot of suppliers made the decision to only supply plants from the midwest, now you have six plants, four which are very convenient to east Mississippi.

I think you will see that they are not only going to look at north Mississippi but east Mississippi. We believe we have some advantages.

What can these smaller towns do to attract the automotive industry?

First of all, towns that want to attract the automotive industry need to hustle. A Toyota supplier has to make their products before the plant opens because when it opens they want just in time delivery from the suppliers.

That means when the suppliers schedule is faster than Toyota’s, towns need to really hustle and get their sites ready. One of the things about automotive development in the south is in the fact it can only be in one place but you can have suppliers scattered through a large area and small towns can have a supplier. Some of the suppliers will have 15 or 25 jobs in a little town that is not even a county seat. There are a lot of towns that are big enough to support a plant with 250 employees and that plant will probably end up with 500 employees five years from now.

Importantly many more communities get to participate in the economic growth in the automotive industry through the suppliers. We have done something unprecedented in Mississippi and that is we have made part of the incentive package 30 million dollars for the benefit of the suppliers exclusively. I appreciate Toyota agreeing to that and appreciate the legislature being willing to do what I ask them to do.

You often menton Toyota and Nissan in the same breath. How do you think the Toyota plant will impact the Nissan plant?

I don’t think the Toyota plant will affect the Nissan plant in any significant way. They are far enough apart, first of all they are two very different labor markets. Nissan at first had people coming from all over the state but mainly from central Mississippi. The people at Toyota are from north Mississippi and suburban Memphis, so the labor markets don’t overlap very much. Suppliers can locate in north mississippi and east Mississippi.

Having more suppliers to compete to sell Nissan and Toyota coming here,

there will be more suppliers competing for everyone’s business.

What about tax reform?

My goal in the next term is to cut taxes, which I believe I will be able to

do. We have gotten our financial house back in order, but because of Katrina we need a little more time.

Jack Tannehill from the Union Appeal said the most common threads he sees in both campaigns for Lt. Gov. is their allegiance to you and there pledge of support to you and which one is the most Haley?

Both are good men with very good records in their respective fields and both would make good Lieutenant Governors.

Cheryl McLain from The Newton Record asked what is your position on illegal immigration?

The Federal government is not getting their job done protecting the borders.

We are the most powerful nation in the world but not protecting our borders, not because we are not able to. About 40 percent of illegal immigrants that are here came here legally and when their Visa expired the federal government doesn’t keep up with where they are. Mississippi is as strict on illegal immigrants as the law allows us to be. They do not allow the state or local government to deny emergency medical services to someone who is here illegally. We can deny drivers license. We are working on a program now on how we can help local law enforcement and employers better enforce the immigration law since the federal government falls down on the job. We have a lot of Spanish people that are here and I don’t know what we would have done without them on the coast. They are playing an indispensable role down there.

Gov. Barbour ended the interview with the question asked to him if he is running for Governor?

This is kind of a start of a little short campaign for the primary and then

I want to spend August focused on being governor which is what I have done up until now. As you know I haven’t been campaigning any amount of time because I think my job is to be governor.

People expect me to be governor. I want to encourage people to vote in the Republican primary and come September we will start the campaign in earnest.