Panel’s economic focus ruffles caucus
Members of the Arkansas Legislative Black Caucus told the state’s economic development director last week that his agency needs to step up its game in south Arkansas.
Mike Preston, executive director of the Arkansas Economic Development Commission, defended the state’s efforts to create more jobs in the region over the past three years, citing projects already announced and the agency’s continuing work to bolster economic development in that area of the state.
Preston also directed the lawmakers to an online interactive map that his agency created to visually communicate the effect of approximately 16,000 jobs that companies have promised to create in Arkansas in the past three years. The map is available at https://tinyurl.com/ y7u65qvu.
He touted the 322 companies that have agreed to invest nearly $7 billion in Arkansas through incentive agreements and pay an average hourly wage of $20.84.
But Rep. John Walker, D-Little Rock, told Preston that his citations and talk of more marketing of south Arkansas’ timber assets were “cosmetic.”
He told Preston that he believed job growth had lagged south of a line created by Interstate 30 from Little Rock to Texarkana and east of Interstate 40 from Little Rock to West Memphis.
“I don’t know what the explanation can be when 90-plus percent of the jobs” are in an area that has no more natural resources than
south Arkansas, Walker said.
“Either the people over here are not worthy or not well-educated or not trained and in order, you’re saying, for them to get jobs … that are still pretty largely low-income jobs, you want them to move from south Arkansas to north Arkansas, where the natural resources are no greater except for the investment that we make into higher education on the other side of the line,” he said. “It’s the investment that comes from either philanthropy or private industry into that portion of the state.
“Our people have not prospered or progressed at all. It all has gotten worse since [Sen.] Joyce Elliott began her effort to try to enhance opportunity in south Arkansas in 2003,” Walker said, referring to a fellow Little Rock Democrat.
“With all due respect, representative,” Preston responded, “I do feel like our team, the entire state, has worked very hard the last three years to grow our economy, to bring in these 16,000 jobs.
“We can argue about the numbers and the details of where they go. I don’t agree with a lot of the assumptions you made, and your numbers are not necessarily accurate. I would challenge you to go to the website and look at it interactively where these jobs are going,” he said.
“We continue to focus on south Arkansas. We continue to focus on east Arkansas. We want to see jobs grow all over the state.
“We cannot tell a company where they’re going to locate. What we can do is to help a company decide that they want to come to Arkansas,” Preston said.
“We have to do a job of selling our state, and when you hear negative comments coming from you, representative, it is hard for us,” Preston told Walker before pausing briefly.
“Or those consultants that come in and say, ‘Oh, Arkansas is doing a great job,’ [and] we think we are doing a good job in Arkansas. We have a great story to tell, and that’s our job to get out there.
“That’s why we have momentum in our state, and it is disheartening to hear you come up here and get some arrows thrown at us from you for not focusing on areas when certainly we are,” Preston said.
In response, Walker told Preston: “I want you to understand, I do not wish for you to ever come here and insult me by saying you are doing something for the people of the whole state, because you are not.”
The exchange between Walker and Preston began after Rep. Fred Love, D-Little Rock, asked Preston about the state’s plans to boost job growth in south Arkansas.
“What are we going to do?” Preston suggested that Love go to the commission website “to get a better understanding of what all of these jobs mean and what they represent and look at the interactive models.”
“Yeah, you will see a difference there. But a lot of it is based on population and making sure that you have the people there that are able to fill the jobs. Job growth is going to come where there are additional people,” he said.
Many counties in south Arkansas have been losing population for decades.
Preston noted that his agency has focused its south Arkansas job creation on the area’s 19 million acres of timber.
“We have begun a very aggressive timber-focused campaign, looking at trying to bring more mills into our state,” Preston said.
“I know that we had the success in Arkadelphia with Sun Paper out of China. You’ve seen success with Highland Pellets in the Pine Bluff area. We have several in El Dorado as well that we are working on.”
The largest project Preston referred to is Sun Paper’s plan to invest $1 billion in a bioproducts mill that is expected to employ 250 people in Arkadelphia.
“We are trying to better utilize our natural resources that we have available to us and do a strong marketing campaign,” Preston said. “We see opportunities right now coming out of Canada because of some of the issues that they are having in the timber industry as an opportunity to pull some more businesses down.”
Eastern and northeast Arkansas “with the steel industry, [is] building out from that,” and Chinese textile manufacturer Shandong Ruyi Technology Group plans to invest $410 million in a plant and create 800 jobs in Forrest City by tapping the state’s cotton supply, Preston said.
“There are other impediments that we’ll need to overcome, but we need to continue to work on that,” he said.
Love asked Preston what impediments members of the Legislative Black Caucus could assist Preston in addressing.
Lawmakers could use the interactive map and help find the workers needed by companies in places like Dumas, Preston said.
“We need to make sure that we’re making the link between those who are looking for a job and those job providers who are looking for employees,” he said.