Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

Economic Outlook Improves In Arkansas

More than 9,200 jobs were created from efforts in 1999 with an average hourly wage of $12.10 by the Arkansas Department of Economic Development, according to officials with the department.

Barbara Pardue, director of the department, has been traveling around Arkansas touting the plan, which calls for the jobs to be created and provide incentives for those companies which provide them.

Major job announcements were made in 47 of the state's 75 counties last year. The department's efforts are sometimes separate from local economic office efforts, though, the two groups often work together.

Jobs created by the state agency do not reflect work done by local economic offices in Clark and Nevada Counties during 1999.

Southwest Arkansas will reap the benefits since about 1,700 jobs will be created by the state agency, signing 23 agreements with major corporations planning to locate in Arkansas or existing companies that plan to expand.

Special agreements worked by the state provide tax breaks and other governmental incentives for the jobs created in Arkansas. The incentives are not given to the companies until the state can verify the jobs have been created.

Pardue said that 136 companies signed such agreements in 1999. 111 companies are already doing business in the state and will be generating 69 percent of the new jobs. The 25 companies new to the state were responsible for 31 percent of the total jobs to be created.

Pardue said that for every dollar the state will invest in tax incentive to support new and expanded operations in Arkansas, the state will reap a benefit of $3.61. The figure is derived from a cost-benefit model used by Arkansas and several other states. This figure climbed from $3.22 in 1998.

These are the only figures required to be released under the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act (FOI) by the department.

State and local economic offices are protected from releasing not only the names of any potential business looking at a community, but also from releasing the business' planning, site location, expansion, marketing, operations and product development.

Release of such information could keep that company from locating anywhere in the state.

If this type of information is released to the public, officials recognize those competing companies could find out information that could jeopardize the potential company's ability to fairly do business in the state.

In addition, the release of such information could hurt the state's efforts to recruit new industry by giving competing states unfair advantage to recruit the same corporation.

Recently the state economic office was sued in Pulaski County by Little Rock's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for release of additional information.

Last Thursday, Pulaski County Circuit Court Judge Christ Piazza ruled that the type of information sought by the Little Rock newspaper was not open under the state's FOI law. The FOI law has been in effect since 1967.

Pardue's office does disclose expenditures of public funds invested to support economic development and job creation.

State or local economic offices, as any office that is supported by taxpayer's funds, are audited on a regular basis to protect citizenry from an abuse of misspending.

Capital investments by the corporations that are creating the 9,200 new jobs is $1.472 billion.

Jobs created in Southwest Arkansas by the incentives were the fewest among the four sections of the state.

Figures released by Pardue's office show that 3,189 jobs from 45 projects were created in Northwest Arkansas. Central Arkansas had 2,433 jobs created from 23 projects while Eastern Arkansas had 45 projects creating 1,826 jobs.

Pardue was in Hope Thursday, January 13, to go over these matters with the media.