New Leggett CEO to make $1.3 million a year

The rewards of being the newly-minted CEO of a Fortune 500 company are obvious in the employment agreement between Carthage-based Leggett & Platt and its new CEO David Haffner.
According to the agreement, which was filed today with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Haffner will receive an annual salary of $775,000 and a cash bonus of $542,500, giving him a grand total of $1,317.500 a year.
According to the agreement, Hafner's salary will be reviewed each year by the company's Compensation Committee which may give him a raise, but cannot cut his salary.
That would be enough benefits for most of us, but Haffner's deal features other perks. According to the agreement, "(Haffner) shall be granted non-qualified options to purchase a number of shares of the company's common stock equal to $2,325,000 divided by the closing price of the company's common stock on May 10, 2006."
He also will receive at least four weeks of paid vacation and can participate in any insurance, pension, profit sharing, stock bonus, stock option, stock purchase or other benefit the company has, according to the agreement.
And that's not all.
"The company shall pay or reimburse the executive for all transportation, hotel,living and related expenses incurred by the executive on business trips away from the company's principal office and for all other business and entertainment expenses reasonably incurred by him in connection with the business of the company and its subsidiaries or affiliates."
Haffner's former position, chief operating officer, will now be held by Karl Glassman, whose employment agreement was also filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Glassman has been serving as executive vice president. Glassman will receive a base salary of $620,000, and a $372,000 bonus, bringing him to $992,000 annually.

Wells does it again; Hafner is new Leggett CEO

Though I have yet to see his newspaper, former Joplin Globe staff writer Jeff Wells is apparently breaking nearly every big business story in Joplin these days as a the top gun for the Joplin Tri-State Business Journal.
Today, it was the announcement that David Hafner is the new CEO for Carthage-based Fortune 500 company, Leggett & Platt. Hafner succeeds Felix Wright, who will continue to serve as chairman of the board.
Wells also offered coverage of the Leggett shareholders' rejection of a proposal that would have added protection against discrimination for gays and bisexuals.
This is a major business story for this region. I imagine the Globe will have something about it when Leggett & Platt issues its press release.

Straight ticket voting is a disgrace

Sen. Delbert Scott's Photo ID bill deserves to be shot down at some point down the line, though it probably will not be.
Forget about the question about whether it is designed to discourage Democratic voters from coming to the polls; I oppose this legislation because it is unnecessary, expensive, and is already becoming a magnet for special interests who want a piece of the photo ID pie.
A column in today's St. Louis Post-Dispatch says state Democrats are unhappy with Sen. Scott because of his announcement on the Senate floor Tuesday night that a conference committee had decided to add a ban on straight-ticket voting to the bill. Though that addition was later eliminated, it is an idea that should have been implemented long ago.
I grow tired of the Democrats' lament that the Republicans are doing everything they can to discourage people from going to the polls. I can see that argument where the photo identification is concerned. It doesn't wash where straight ticket voting is concerned.
Straight ticket voting is a tacit approval of voters who are too lazy to take the time to find out how the candidates stand on the issues. I have yet to run into a non-primary election in which I did not split my votes between the two major parties and, on occasion, I have even voted for an independent or someone from a minor party. No one party has a lock on all of the best candidates. I have always been satisfied with my votes for Democrats such as Jay Nixon, Mel Carnahan, and Claire McCaskill, but I was no less pleased with my votes for John Danforth and Kit Bond, neither of whom I have ever cast a ballot against in an election.
In a county election, a straight ticket makes even less sense. These are positions where competence should be the only consideration since the candidates' views on divisive national issues do not even come into play.
Straight ticket voting is a remnant of the days when party bosses and ward heelers told people who to vote for and made sure the votes were cast for every candidate in a party.
Party workers should strive for that, but if all of their candidates win, it should be due to their merit, and not because of an archaic device like the straight-ticket vote.

Hunter amendment: Toss out press, give legislators a place to work out

Maybe Steve Hunter has a point.
According to former Carnahan aide Roy Temple's blog, Fired Up Missouri, the Joplin Republican offered an amendment to the MOHELA bill which would take away press space at the capitol and have it made into a workout area for the legislators.
That would give the fat cats in our legislature a place to work off those excess pounds.
A more complete account of the Hunter amendment and how he envisioned the willingness of his special interest friends to finance the project, can be found in this St. Louis Post-Dispatch article.

Cruzan lawyer: Families need to talk about living will provisions

Bill Colby, the lawyer who successfully represented the Cruzan family in the landmark right-to-die lawsuit which eventually enabled Joe and Joyce Cruzan to remove the feeding tubes from their daughter seven years after an accident near Carthage left her in a persistent vegetative state, told an audience Monday that families need to discuss living will provisions.
If they don't, he warned, legal documents may not be enough. His talk is covered in a St. Louis Post-Dispatch column.

New corporate headquarters close to home for GateHouse CEO

The Liberty Group Publishing name will disappear because there are too many businesses named Liberty, newly-named GateHouse Media CEO Mike Reed told Editor & Publisher, the newspaper industry magazine.
The new name, Reed told the magazine reflects GateHouse newspapers' status as the gatekeepers of local information. "So we’re standing at the GateHouse at the walls of the town," he said.
The move of the corporate headquarters from a Chicago suburb to Rochester, N. Y., is happening primarily because Reed is from the Rochester area, he told the magazine. The company will now do such things as file corporate income tax returns, have a human resources department, and a staff of auditors working out of Rochester, the article said. Previously, these items had been outsourced.

Carthage Cox Communications sale goes through

Several Cox cable franchises in Missouri, including Carthage, Pierce City, Monett, and Aurora, now belong to SuddenLink Communications, formerly Cebridge, according to various web sources.

First fast food drive-through may have been in Springfield

A Knight-Ridder column posted today says the first fast-food, drive-through window may have been in Springfield.
According to the article written by Jeff Elder:

"Where was the first fast-food drive-through? That's a little tougher to nail down. Some say Sheldon "Red" Chaney - a man of true genius - dreamed this up. In 1947 he opened Red's Giant Hamburgs Route 66 in Springfield, Mo.
"Why'd he call it Red's giant Hamburgs? Supposedly he measured the sign wrong and ran outta room. Genius.
"At Red's you drove up to the window and yelled your order into it. Inside, the ceiling was painted blue and the floors painted green, so people who dined in would feel like they were on a picnic. Genius."

Cassville company to pay more than $1.2 million in back wages

George's Processing, Inc., a Cassville poultry processing plant, has agreed to pay $1.235 million in back overtime wages, according to a U. S. Department of Labor news release.
"In addition to the back wage payment," the news release said, the judgment also enjoins George's Processing from future violations of the overtime and recordkeeping provisions of the FLSA. Under the terms of the judgment, the company agreed, without admission of liability, to locate and pay back wages to all current and former employees over a period of the next 12 months. At the end of that period, all undistributed payments will be returned to the Labor Department's Wage and Hour Division for final disbursement."
The pay covers the period from Nov. 19, 2000, to April 15, 2006, the news release said.

Tribune: GOP leader worked for lobbying firm

On several occasions I have mentioned that Rep. Steve Hunter, R-Joplin, is a paid membership recruiter for Associated Industries of Missouri, a group which essentially is a lobbying firm for state businesses.
Apparently, Hunter is not the only House member with such a blatant conflict of interest. Speaker Pro Tem Carl Bearden, the second most powerful man in the House, listed DK Solutions, a lobbying firm as a place from which he received income, according to an article in today's Columbia Tribune.