BY Elizabeth Reid
Contributing Writer, Delta Business Journal

  Proposed legislation that would have created a state department of labor died in committee March 7, a move opponents to the bill said saved Delta taxpayers thousands of dollars.
  Proponents of Senate Bill 2668, which would have created the Mississippi Department of Labor-Management Relations by July 1, 2001, said consolidation of numerous functions from other areas of state government under a single agency in Mississippi, the only state they say that does not have a labor department, would be cost-efficient and could result in increased federal funding for workforce training dollars. Others disagree.
  "Legislation as comprehensive as a state department of labor is something that we should study long and hard before its passage," said Griffin Norquist, chairman of the Delta Council and president of the Bank of Yazoo City.
Governor Ronnie Musgrove, who supported the new state department and will likely see it as an agenda item in next year's legislative session, said Mississippi had to return more than $50 million in federal funds because of the absence of a state labor department. Others said the funds - namely, Welfare to Work money - were returned because available TANF funding was sufficient.
  According to an interdepartmental memo, the Welfare to Work funding would have flowed through the JTPA or ES funding system and would not have required any additional infrastructure. The money was not lost because we did not have a system in place, but was turned back for lack of interest.
  Before the legislative motion died, Musgrove had repeated his position at an annual AFL-CIO convention.
Thomas E. Lord, executive director of the Mississippi Employment Security Commission, said parts of the bill had merit, such as "combining training functions that need consolidating," he said
  Consolidating workforce training dollars and giving employees one place to go to file a complaint could be done in a simpler way than forming a state labor department, said John Baas, director of industrial relations for the Mississippi Manufacturers Association
  Opponents to the bill said a layer of unnecessary bureaucracy with regulatory burdens at a cost to state taxpayers would be created. It would consist of a governor-appointed director and five appointed commission members over five agencies - employment security, workplace safety and health, job development and training, employee relations and job discrimination and disabled employee assistance.
  "It seems clear that legislative leadership felt the same way," he said. "While we agree that consolidation of programs is generally a way to operate more efficiently, we must be very careful before we do anything that would dilute our status as a Right to Work state."