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The RR Donnelley Company is investing six million dollars in its Owensville plant.  That and taxpayer incentives of $1.5 million over three years will boost the employment here by nearly a third.  That's good news from a community whose unemployment rate is still struggling to hit single digits.

"We have come down quite a little in the last eight months,” Mayor Dixon Somerville said. “We were at a high of 14 percent at one time.  We're down to about eleven now."

The governor touts the fact that the statewide unemployment rate, now 8.7 percent, is the lowest in two years.
 
"Now, we've still got a hard road ahead. But, because of our hard work and fiscal discipline, our state's economy is moving ahead,” Gov. Nixon said.

In May, lawmakers could not agree on how to replace unproductive tax credits with new job creation incentives.  Nixon is confident in the deal agreed to this summer by house and senate leaders.
   
"Yeah, there'll be some debate,” Nixon said. “Certainly, when you're doing significant economic development as well as tax credit reform, there's gonna be debate. But my sense is we've got a strong, solid framework that will allow us to get it to the finish line pretty quickly."

The Donnelley expansion, which will add more than 100 jobs here by the end of the year, does not depend on legislative action.  The company is closing a unionized plant in Iowa.  The manager of the Mid-Missouri facility says Owensville is attractive for different reasons.

"This plant just performs well,” Plant Manager Mark Swisher said. “The work ethic in this plant is good.  To the governor's point, people come in early and stay late."