Firearms firm aims to stay

A Northwest Miami-Dade firearms company is gunning for $369,000 in incentives to keep a planned expansion in the county, even as other locales take aim at the importer and manufacturer’s promised 258 jobs.

A nearly three-decade veteran of the county, Taurus USA employs 135 workers and says it will add 123 jobs in an expansion that has drawn incentive offers from beyond Florida’s borders, according to CEO and President Bob Morrison, who cited Georgia’s courtship in particular.

“The [Georgia] governor sent his plane down for us and then took us on a helicopter tour for three days,” Morrison said. “From free land to new buildings to tax abatements for 25 years, there were lots of opportunities to do better in that state than we could here.”

But Morrison added that if he can win incentives to expand in Miami-Dade, he would prefer to remain, as he doubts his primarily Cuban workforce would leave the area. “Virtually none of them would move with us. About 92 percent of our workforce is of Cuban heritage, and to leave Miami and their families would be very difficult,” he said. “It would be gut-wrenching for those folks.”

To try to keep Taurus USA local, the Beacon Council, Miami-Dade’s economic development agency, shepherded a $369,000 incentives package through the Miami-Dade County Commission last week under a tax refund program geared toward higher-wage job creation. The state has the final say on whether to approve the package, a decision Council President Frank Nero said will likely come in about a month.

The Qualified Target Industry program being used generally requires a minimum average new job salary of $41,516 — or 115 percent of the state’s average wage — but that requirement was waived because of the economic climate and the would-be expansion’s location near a designated Enterprise Zone. New Taurus USA employees will be paid an average of $32,000 a year.

Morrison said the county’s attitude toward the gun industry has also been a factor in his willingness to consider relocating, pointing to a 1999 lawsuit against gun companies brought by then-Miami-Dade Mayor Alex Penelas.

“We had to defend ourselves against the county we live in,” Morrison said. “We’ve prevailed in that lawsuit. And there hasn’t been open hostility since, but there have been no love affairs going on. I can tell you that.”

The expansion plans come amid a heyday for firearms manufacturers, who have seen background checks for new weapons — an indicator of actual sales — shoot up 24.5 percent in the first half of 2009, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Morrison declined to give figures but said his company’s sales have risen rapidly over the past five years — jumping as much as 25 to 35 percent annually.

Andy Molchan, director of the Fort Lauderdale-based Professional Gun Retailers Association, said the trend echoes a pattern of rising gun sales whenever anxiety increases, as it tends to during recessions. But he added that since Barack Obama’s election, concerns about the potential for new gun control measures have also spurred sales.

Taurus USA imports 90 percent of its pistols, revolvers and rifles from its parent company in Brazil and manufactures the rest in Miami. Morrison said the expansion will bring the proportion of firearms manufactured in-house to about a quarter of the company’s stock.

Taurus guns are generally regarded as mid-market and are not widely used by police or the military, according to Molchan. “They’re kind of a Chevy, not a Cadillac,” he said. “But that’s where they always wanted to be.”

Morrison said some commissioners expressed reservations about giving incentives to a gun company, but nearly all supported the package. Only one of the 12 commissioners voting cast a no ballot — an outcome that Nero of the Beacon Council said was reached with full awareness of the county’s high unemployment rate.

“People understand that we’re talking about over 300 jobs at risk here with 11.5 percent unemployment,” he said. “Quite frankly, I think everyone understood the importance of getting this passed.