“This is proving to be a very popular and successful program,” O’Brian said. “But right now, without the funding, it’s putting Missouri back again to not being as competitive.”

Local beneficiaries

Both LaBarge and EaglePicher Technologies in Joplin have used the program in the past to create jobs and company officials said the incentive influenced corporate decisions to bring jobs to the area.

Darrell Ideker, manager of business development for EaglePicher Technologies in Joplin, said the Quality Jobs legislation played a part in the company’s decision to add lithium-ion battery production in Missouri as opposed to across the state line with one of its other plants in Pittsburg, Kan.

EaglePicher used the legislation to create 105 jobs over the next five years. Ideker wouldn’t say how much the jobs will pay, but that it will be more than Jasper County’s average wage.

EaglePicher will benefit from the new legislation if the governor signs it, by getting more tax relief over more years. Currently, Ideker said the company is scheduled to use the incentive from 2008 through 2011.

Terry Geisz, general manager of the Joplin LaBarge plant, said they will use the Quality Jobs Act to create nearly 100 new jobs over the next several years. There are already 35 employees who qualify for tax credits under the program. Geisz said the jobs were hires the company would have made anyway, but the Quality Jobs Act was helpful in the ever tightening world of manufacturing budgets.

“It definitely defrays some of the costs for us,” he said.

$40,000 to $100,000 pay

State Rep. Ron Richard, R-Joplin, said most of the 7,000 jobs he knows of statewide that hinge on the governor signing the Missouri Quality Jobs Act will pay between $40,000 and $100,000 a year.