The Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Industry and many Missouri businesses hope Gov. Jay Nixon will sign a bill lawmakers passed this year with strong, bipartisan majorities.
The measure would help encourage companies to offer employee stock ownership plans, or ESOPs.
"We're talking about the benefits of the bill so that people can get educated about it, throughout the state and around the country," Chamber President and CEO Dan Mehan told reporters during a Wednesday morning conference call. "The bill allows business owners to defer up to 50 percent of the taxes gained from the sale of stock to an employee stock option program - as long as the company is over 30 percent employee-owned.
"So the deduction allowed would create an incentive to sell their companies in Missouri to their employees - as opposed to running the risk of, as a lot of baby boomers are these days, moving out of the business and offering it up on the auction block to anyone outside of the state or outside of the country or just closing their doors."
The bill would give employees a greater stake in the future of the companies they work for, House Speaker Pro Tem Denny Hoskins, R-Warrensburg, said.
"We've found that study after study shows that, when as an employee you are a part owner in the business that you are working for, your productivity (and) your sense of pride and workmanship increases," he said. "It not only benefits the company, but it benefits self-esteem for the worker, as well."
Hoskins said he sponsored the bill after talking with supporters.
"We talked about what every Missourian dreams about - the American dream - is being an owner in a particular business," he said. "This bill provides that opportunity for employees to have the American dream and be a part-owner of a business."
State Sen. Ryan Silvey, R-Kansas City, said the proposed law was "the right idea at the right time," adding: "This year, there wasn't a whole lot of legislation moving that was jobs-focused, and trying to improve the economy.
"I think this is something we will be able to look back on for a long time and say, 'This is something that made a difference for our economy and our state, moving forward.'"
Denny Scott, chief financial officer of the 118-year-old Kansas City-based Burns and McDonnell engineering firm, praised the Legislature for passing a bill that would encourage more companies to create ESOPs.
His company began its employee stock option plan 30 years ago, under provisions of a federal law, "and we've taken good advantage of that," Scott said, adding the Missouri law is "going to give the owner of a company who has had some loyal employees for years and years and years (an) opportunity to reap the rewards that they've earned over the past years."
His own company is a good example, Scott said.
The firm had been sold to Armco Steel in the 1970, "then Armco needed some money, and they put us up for sale. We were going to be purchased by a German manufacturing firm," but the federal law allowed the employees to buy the company, instead.
"So, we also feel like it saved, at the time, 500 U.S. jobs," Scott said.
He said the company now has more than 5,000 employees, with 2,800 in Missouri. And, he said, Burns and McDonnell has grown from about $41 million worth of business in 1986 to a reported $2.5 billion last year.