Although he is careful not to call himself a Republican — as a journalist, he maintains that party associations are the enemy of objectivity — there is little doubt that Wyatt Emmerich is a fiscal conservative through and through.
Emmerich is the publisher of the weekly Northside Sun in Jackson and owner of 24 newspapers, most of them located in Mississippi. He also writes a column, which is widely distributed throughout the state and often appears in The Dispatch.
On Tuesday, Emmerich was the guest speaker at the Columbus Rotary Club, and for anyone who has followed Emmerich’s columns for any length of time, his views, particularly when it comes to efforts to recruit industry to our state, could be mistaken as a relentless attack on Mississippi’s Republican establishment.
“I’m sure it seems that way,” Emmerich said. “It’s just that the Republicans are in charge now and I’m writing about what they do.”
For the past 20 years or so, Mississippi’s strategy has been misguided and counter-productive, he says.
“This all started with Nissan,” he said. “At the time, Mississippi’s unemployment was about two percentage points better than the national average. Today, our unemployment is about two points above the national average and we have either the highest or second highest unemployment rate. Now, there are other factors, of course, but I think it’s also fair to say that what we are doing — bribing all these companies to come here — isn’t working.”
Emmerich’s position is not based just on personal philosophy. He bases his complaints on his long history as a businessman. The third generation of one of Mississippi’s oldest newspaper families, Emmerich has almost doubled the family’s newspaper holdings since the death of his father, John, in 1995.
Before he assumed control of the family business — after earning degrees at Harvard and UCLA — he worked on Wall Street as an investment banker for newspapers.
His attitude toward the state’s efforts are based on what he learned from those experiences.
“What if I ran my business that way?” Emmerich said. “What if just took the (asking price) on every newspaper I wanted to buy? How long would it take for me to go out of business? The difference is when the state does it, they don’t go out of business because they’re spending taxpayer money.”
He has been sharply critical of most of the state’s big deals — including Yokohama ($260 million in state incentives) and, most recently, Continental Tire, which will build a plant near Clinton backed by $600 million in incentives and tax breaks.
“Think about that one,” Emmerich said. “Our legislature just passed a $6 billion budget and they’re giving $600 million to a tire company. If there is anything they can agree on, it’s to give hundreds of millions of dollars to anybody who promises to give us some jobs.”
While acknowledging that competition among states requires negotiating, Emmerich said the state has proven to be terrible negotiators.
Indeed, earlier this year, when Gov. Phil Bryant was in Lowndes County, he mentioned all the efforts made to land Yokohama Tire and said, “I wish we could have given them more.”
It is that kind of thinking that keeps Emmerich shaking his head.
“Who does business that way?” he said. “These companies have executives and lawyers and their job is to get the best deal possible and they are absolutely taking (Mississippi) to the cleaners.”
For Emmerich, its a sign of both desperation and a lack of confidence.
“It’s almost as if, these people don’t believe the free market will work here,” he said. “Mississippi has a great story to tell, but sometimes I wonder if our leaders really believe that. For some reason, they think they have to bribe these companies to bring them here. I don’t believe that.”
The focus, he said, should be paying attention to all the things that make a state attractive to industries looking to expand or relocate.
“It’s about infrastructure,” he said. “Companies want to locate where the roads are good, where the schools are good, where there is a skilled workforce.”
He said Bryant often touts the benefits of the new deals while ignoring or minimizing the costs.
“The truth is, some of these deals that they are telling us are wins are really losses,” he said.
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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