Mississippi Furniture Assn. to renew tax incentive bid

Wants to support state's cut-and-sew jobs

Gary Evans -- Furniture Today, July 27, 2009

TUPELO, Miss. — The president of the Mississippi Furniture Assn. said his group plans to ask Gov. Haley Barbour to reverse an earlier veto on a tax incentive package for cut-and-sew jobs in the state's upholstery industry.

"We're going to ask the governor to sit down and visit with us. We want to know what his concerns are," said Ken Pruett. The MFA met late last week to work on its plans.

Barbour vetoed the bill in April after it sailed through both the state house and senate. The legislation would have provided for a tax credit of $2,000 for each cut-and-sew job, which would have cost about $11 million, according to news reports.

The governor said that the cost was too high and that the state's tax credit law was designed to support new, higher paying jobs.

"His veto message did not make sense at all. He totally ignored the questions we were addressing. He's got to tell us what we have to do. We cannot walk away from this incentive," Pruett said.

He said the association, with the help of industry experts that included the Franklin Institute at Mississippi State University, spent more than three years assembling and documenting its facts before taking its request to the government.

"The governor told us on Oct. 16, 2007, that if it was good for the industry and good for the people, then he would certainly support it," Pruett said. "Well, the bill was good for the people and certainly good for the government" because of the revenue produced by payrolls.

Since the veto, Pruett said, the state has lost 1,100 upholstery jobs, 400 of which were cut-and-sew.

"Cut-and-sew is the heartbeat of the upholstered furniture industry," he said. "When you lose your cut-and-sew, you've lost control of what you're going to do in the future in upholstered furniture.

"The worst thing we're seeing right now is that the furniture industry here in Mississippi has lost enthusiasm," he added.

The cut-and-sew credit is part of a five-pronged approach the MFA supports for strengthening the Mississippi furniture industry. Among the other steps are a foreign trade zone, low-cost loans and export assistance.