Missouri has one of the nation’s worst records in startups of new businesses. Concerns that the state is falling farther and farther behind in the competition for jobs is producing a new legislative effort. Senator Tom Dempsey of St. Charles says Missouri’s present economic development efforts are “like bringing a knife to a gunfight.”
Dempsey of St. Charles is handling a package of economic development bills that offers new and additional incentives that he hopes keep companies from moving from here to other states or from bypassing Missouri entirely.
Dempsey says the package of bills realigns the state’s “targeted incentive tool box to make Missouri more attractive to entrepreneurs, manufactures, and high-growth companies with the jobs they bring.