KSHB 41 reporter Charlie Keegan covers politics on both sides of the state line. If you have a story idea to share, you can send Charlie an email at charlie.keegan@kshb.com.
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Leaders in the manufacturing industry are scratching their heads. President Donald Trump said he wants to encourage companies to open manufacturing facilities in the United States, but then the administration stopped funding a partnership to help manufacturers.
After about two weeks of panic, Congresswoman Sharice Davids announced on Tuesday the federal government will fund the program again — at least until the end of the fiscal year in September.
The program is called the Manufacturing Extension Partnership. It’s been around since 1988 and provides mostly free resources to small and medium-sized manufacturers to help them grow their business, navigate regulations, develop leaders and become more efficient.
On April 1, the federal government announced it ended contracts for the program in 10 states, including Kansas. That saved the government about $13 million. Missouri’s contract with the government doesn’t expire until October.
“It’s very confusing to hear manufacturing is important to the administration, that we’re going to re-shore manufacturing, that we’re going to make manufacturing great again, and that’s not what we’re seeing,” said Tiffany Stovall, CEO of Kansas Manufacturing Solutions.
In Kansas, the nonprofit Kansas Manufacturing Solutions oversees the MEP program. Stovall said she laid off seven members of her 13-person staff after the cut to funding on April 1.
“If manufacturing is important to [the] United States the way we say it is, we have to put our money where our mouth is,” she pleaded.
Davids introduced the Defend American Manufacturing Act to make funding for the MEP program permanent.
“It’s like, ‘Hey, man, this thing’s working; if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’ We didn’t need to mess around with this program. Now that that’s happening, I want to make sure we get them set up for success in the future,” Davids explained.
Bert Benton is the chief operating officer of SOR Controls. The company employs 150 people at its Lenexa factory, where it makes switches and O-rings for industrial machines.
Benton has partnered with Kansas Manufacturing Solutions for at least the past 17 years. He said KMS most recently helped SOR Controls develop a way to dispose of waste to meet environmental regulations.
“A small business like us, we can’t necessarily afford to have a specialist in every particular thing you have to know about in manufacturing,” he explained.
An argument for ending the MEP program is that several private consulting firms can handle the duties, and the federal government doesn’t need to pay for the program.
Stovall and Benton both said privatization is much more expensive, so manufacturers would suffer from that setup.
