Published in the Aug. 29 Leader newspaper
Monday morning I attempted to resign from the Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
It’s harder than it sounds.
Leader Publications belongs to several local chambers of commerce, all of which belong to the Missouri Chamber of Commerce. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, individual businesses that belong to local chambers do not hold individual memberships in the state organization. We’re just members of chapters that do hold memberships.
Why would I want to withdraw Leader World Headquarters from the warm bosom of the Missouri Chamber of Commerce and its allegedly pro-business agenda?
Because I have no desire to move to Texas, or to see any of our customers move there. It’s been our experience that selling advertising to out-of-town – forget out-of-state –customers is about impossible.
The Missouri Chamber of Commerce, at 5 p.m. today, will have officially lost its mind. At that dark hour, Texas Gov. Rick Perry will appear as the state chamber’s guest in Chesterfield. He will invite all those who love "doin’ bidness" to do so in Texas on account of our anti-business atmosphere in this state.
And the Missouri Chamber of Commerce is the organization that invited him here to say that.
The state chamber is supposed to promote business in Missouri. It charges dues to its members, who pay them, presumably, because they believe the organization will help their businesses prosper.
How that is accomplished by bringing in the No. 1 business recruiter from another state is a little hard to grasp.
Of course, there is a back story. That story is the War of Words now being waged over the upcoming veto override vote of a bill that would cut Missouri income taxes, largely for business owners and a little bit (from 6 to 5.5 percent) for everyone else.
The Legislature passed the bill earlier this year. Gov. Jay Nixon vetoed it. The War of Words is being done to pressure legislators to vote to override at the veto session that begins Sept. 11. Millions of dollars, literally, are being spent on radio and television ads to promote the override.
That’s OK. That’s free speech. But bringing in a governor of another state to invite businesses to move there? At the invitation of the state Chamber of Commerce?
That’s nuts.
In the radio ads, Perry refers to Nixon’s veto and makes this statement, "Vetoing a tax cut is the same thing as raising your taxes."
Really? So if a business doesn’t cut prices, that’s the same thing as raising prices? Would any reasonable person buy that argument?
Proponents of the tax cut believe businesses will benefit and jobs will be created if the bill becomes law. Opponents, such as Nixon, have claimed the cut will result in $800 million in lost revenue and that the shortfall will come out of the hide of education.
Boosters dispute that, saying House Bill 253 will phase in over 10 years and only as new revenue goals from other sources are reached.
We surveyed all of Jefferson County’s legislators as to how they planned to vote on the issue. Those results ran last week, except for the response from state Sen. Gary Romine, a Farmington Republican who represents the southern half of Jefferson County, and who campaigned on the promise to be accessible to all counties in his district.
We’re still waiting to hear from him.
There is a back story to the back story. Could it be that Republicans, who control both the House and Senate and are pushing the bill, are trying to put a stink on Gov. Nixon to neutralize his political future? That would be a bonus for them if they could get the bill passed AND paint the governor as a tax-and-spend liberal just as he gears up to run for whatever he’ll run for when he gets term-limited out of Jefferson City in 2016.
There is a huge difference between the Missouri Chamber of Commerce, which is openly political and lobbies for pro-business legislation, and the local chambers, which almost always make a point of not being political.
Local chambers are supervised by volunteer directors who promote local business and community events – concerts, festivals, scholarship programs, etc.
Why would an organization like that take political stands and possibly tick off half of its membership?
Why would an individual business – a hardware store or grocery, say – want to be known as the Democratic or Republican provider of 2-by-4s or hamburger buns? They want to sell those boards and buns to everybody.
Those are understandable differences in focus between the state and local chambers, but there is no logical explanation why the state chamber would invite a job poacher to tout how great things are in his state.
I would quit such an organization if it were possible, but apparently that can’t be done without abandoning the local, sensible chambers.
It’s like having a crazy uncle. You can disapprove of him and avoid him, but he’s still in the family – even if he is trying to move all of us to Texas.
