Nixon says senate partly to blame for job losses

Governor Nixon says the state senate must shoulder much of the blame for the loss of Kokam America, a lithium battery-maker in Lee’s Summit that has fifty workers. He says Missouri is losing Kokam to Michigan, where the company plans to build a new 800,000 square foot plant and hire as many as 900 workers. Nixon blames the senate failed to pass an economic development bill that might have given Missouri the means to keep the factory here.

Nixon says the state’s  incentives offer to KOKAM would have been 24.2-million dollars bigger if the legislature had passed the  e conomic development bill. But the bill has been tied up in filibusters led by senators who are demanding an overhaul of the tax credit system that is used to bring jobs to Missouri or keep jobs here.

The House passed the bill quickly this year but it has languished in the Senate since early February, facing opposition by senators who are rebelling against the state’s tax credit system. They have been able to keep the bill from reaching a vote in the Senate.

(Excerpts from Nixon’s afternoon news conference in his office are attached to this story).