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Gov. Nixon Amps Up Pressure On Senate For Jobs Bill

http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/kcur/local-kcur-836159.mp3

Kansas City, MO – Nixon toured a high-tech plant in Lee's Summit today. Kokam America makes batteries for medical devices, airplanes and electric powered cars and trucks there. A jobs bill stalled in the state senate now would throw 25-million dollars in federal stimulus money into a bid to expand this operation by about 20 fold here. Nixon says it's time to pass the bill.
Nixon: We're coming to a fork in the road, and if we take the right turn in this fork, this will expand into jobs.
Kokam's president says they'd need about 900 new hires to staff the 660-million dollar plant. And that Battery plants attract other manufacturing work. The Smith Electric Truck plant going in at the airport landed in Kansas City, impart because of Kokam America already had.

I’ve been at KCUR almost 30 years, working partly for NPR and splitting my time between local and national reporting. I work to bring extra attention to people in the Midwest, my home state of Kansas and of course Kansas City. What I love about this job is having a license to talk to interesting people and then crafting radio stories around their voices. It’s a big responsibility to uphold the truth of those stories while condensing them for lots of other people listening to the radio, and I take it seriously. Email me at frank@kcur.org or find me on Twitter @FrankNewsman.
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