Magnolia Marketplace

The Seattle Times is reporting that Northrop Grumman and its partner European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co. will pull out of the race for the $35 billion contract to supply the Air Force with a new fleet of refueling tankers.

The paper cites an anonymous source who says the official announcement will come after the stock market closes this afternoon.

There had been rumors that Boeing would eventually have the competition to itself after the Pentagon released the final request for proposals Feb. 24.

For the ST’s full report, click here.

Yesterday was a major deadline for legislation at the Capitol, with bills that have already cleared one chamber needing to make it out of committee or die until next session.

Senate Bill 2153, which would have allowed concealed weapon permit holders to carry their firearms into public parks, unsecured public buildings and bars and restaurants — provided owners chose to allow it — died in the House Judiciary B Committee.

Magnolia Marketplace has a story about the legislation in this week’s MBJ. The restaurant owners we talked to were wary, to say the least, of allowing handguns into their buildings. Andy Wilson, who has Underground 119 in Downtown Jackson, was the most adamant, saying the legislation reminded him of the Wild West days when cowboys packed their pistols in swinging-door saloons.

Although the issue is dead for this session, look for it to appear next year. The National Rifle Association, one of the most powerful lobbies in politics, has made this legislation a priority.

The two bills that deal with the Old Blind School property, which Jackson developer Ted Duckworth wants to turn into a mixed-use development, are still active. SB 3097, authored by Jack Gordon, would authorize the state to lease the property for development. Rep. Cecil Brown, D-Jackson, has authored House Bill 637, which calls for the state to sell the property to a developer with conditions attached that would allow the state to take it back if those conditions were not met.

We had a story about the competing pieces of legislation about a month ago, in which we learned that Duckworth would most likely pull out of the project if the state insisted on leasing the property instead of selling it. With both the lease and sell bills still alive, Duckworth’s future involvement would seem to be still very much up in the air.

Toyota announced today that it will idle two of its manufacturing facilities — one in Texas, the other in Kentucky — as the fallout from the recalls spreads. The plant in Texas, which makes the Tundra truck, will shut down for one week in March and one week in April. The facility in Kentucky, where Toyota builds the Camry and Avalon sedans and the Venza crossover, will idle Feb. 26 and possibly two or three more days in March or April,a spokesman told the Associated Press.

That doesn’t make much of an impact here in Mississippi, but I have a story in this week’s edition of the MBJ that takes a look at how the recalls — which added the Prius about 10 days ago — might affect the Blue Springs plant, which supposedly will build the Prius, though nobody really knows when production will start. Be sure to check it out.

Anyway, there remain a few notes from that story that didn’t really fit with the overall theme of the final draft, but are still worth mentioning:

Michelle Krebs, senior analyst at Edmunds.com, had an interesting take on how Toyota is handling the public relations boondoggle the recalls have created. A lot of folks have said that Toyota was slow to react, and when it did, did not do that great a job. That may be due to a couple things, Krebs said. The first is that there apparently was no established blueprint  to start putting out the fires immediately after they started. Krebs’ second theory goes to the Japanese culture.

“I would think that any major corporation of any sort would have a crisis management plan ready to enact at any moment,” she said. “You would think they would practice some of these scenarios. I think it’s definitely a lack of experience. If you look at the Japanese culture, the companies are revered. They don’t have a lot of lawyers. They don’t have the scrutiny of the media like we do here. And frankly, I think Toyota got arrogant and got complacent.”

Mark Ragsdale, a former dealership owner who now serves as a consultant to the automotive industry, said Toyota put too much of the PR burden on its dealers, which runs counter to the reputation it has enjoyed among its individual franchises.

“Toyota always is in the top two or three in dealer-relations surveys,” Ragsdale said. “But automakers are their own breed of cat. They’re not real big on taking responsibility. The automakers use dealers as human shields to get in front of the customer and handle things, but dealers don’t always have the tools to do that.”

Toyota announced late last night it is recalling 133,000 2010 Prius hybrids to fix problems associated with the antilock braking system software. Also included in the recall are 14,500 2010 Lexus HS 250h models.

Toyota said in a press release that some Prius and 250h owners have experienced “inconsistent brake feel during slow and steady application of brakes on rough or slick road surfaces when the ABS is activated in an effort to maintain tire traction.”

Obviously, the Prius is near and dear to the heart of Mississippi’s business community, with the facility in Blue Springs on tap to eventually build the vehicle. Magnolia Marketplace is working on a story for next week’s MBJ about how the recall mess will (or won’t) affect the goings-on in North Mississippi. Look for it.

UPDATED AT 10 A.M.: Meant to include a link to the Toyota press release, which is here.

We just got off the phone with Toyota Motor Manufacturing North America Spokeswoman Barbara McDaniel. Here’s the full transcript of our brief conversation.

Magnolia Marketplace: “Has anything become official with the Prius recall?”

McDaniel: “No, there’s nothing official. We’re still investigating.”

Magnolia Marketplace: “I’m contractually obligated to ask this question, but will this have any effect on the Blue Springs facility?”

McDaniel: “No.”

So there you have it. Gov. Haley Barbour is holding a press conference at 11 a.m. to announce yet another round of budget cuts, but we’ll try to sneak in a question about Toyota and see what he thinks.

UPDATED AT 9:36 A.M.: Barbour’s office has just issued a press release announcing the press conference at 11 has been canceled so Barbour can “continue to analyze budget options.”

Gov. Haley Barbour was the keynote for today’s monthly luncheon meeting of the Stennis Capitol Press Corps in Jackson. Usually, speakers offer a 20- to 30-minute presentation before taking a few questions from the audience.

Barbour took the podium and started taking questions immediately. It was a nice change.

Anyway, Barbour didn’t say a whole lot that he didn’t say Friday, when he announced that he was making the third round of cuts to the state’s budget.

He did say that he thought “the vast majority of school districts will be fine” financially after the the latest round of cuts brought the total dollars shaved from the Mississippi Adequate Education Program to $170 million for fiscal year 2010. State Superintendent of Education Dr. Tom Burnham said Friday afternoon that the cuts would “devastate” the state’s public education system. School districts will have to lean heavily on their reserves, Barbour said, to make it to the end of the budget  year. Included in Barbour’s executive budget recommendation is a $35 million set aside to assist those districts whose reserves are not as deep as others.

Barbour also repeated a line he has used frequently the past couple months, that he thinks Mississippi will emerge from the national recession quicker than other states because of the proliferation of high-tech manufacturing jobs from projects like Severstal in Columbus and the GE Aviation plant in Batesville. His commission to study school consolidation is scheduled to release its findings in a report on April 1, which is too late for that issue to be considered in the regular session. Barbour said it’s likely a special session would be needed to tackle it. That, of course, is assuming lawmakers are able to craft a budget for FY2011 by the end of March, which is far from guaranteed.

Barbour, who serves as chairman of the Republican Governors Association, also talked some national politics. He called Republican Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts for the right to fill Ted Kennedy’s old U.S. Senate seat “volcanic” and said it had changed the GOP’s playbook for 2010 and beyond, with candidate recruitment increasing in some places that have traditionally been hostile to Republicans. The RGA, Barbour said, has $25 million to spend on elections in 2010, which is a record amount.

Barbour thinks this political environment is more favorable to Republicans than it was in 1994, when Barbour was head of the National Republican Committee and engineered the GOP takeover of the U.S. House and Senate.

“There’s a lot of energy on our side,” Barbour said.

Barbour also had a pretty interesting take on the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to strike down a 20-year-old law that prohibited corporations and unions from spending money on political advertising. Magnolia Marketplace is working on a story about that for next week’s MBJ, and Barbour’s thoughts on the matter will pepper it pretty heavily. Look for it.