Mississippi is likely to see more companies lay off employees and put projects on hold due to the national recession, but Gov. Haley Barbour said Tuesday in Vicksburg that the state is better poised than its neighbors to emerge from the recession as a leading employer.

“We’ve never gone into a crisis with a lot of momentum. We have something going for us for a change going into this financial predicament, and we need to focus on how to keep it going when we come out of it,” said Barbour, who provided the keynote address at the Vicksburg Main Street Program’s Annual Meeting.

Barbour said the state was creating tens of thousands of jobs each year through 2007 since he took office in 2003, and had turned a $720 million budget shortfall into a balanced budget with $375 million in surplus rainy day funds heading into this legislative session.

“We had a lot of momentum and trajectory that a lot of our sister states didn’t have,” said Barbour. “We’ve got to buckle down, accept the reality that this is going to be a tough period and focus ourselves on how we are going to emerge on the other side.”

Barbour touched briefly on the recovery package heading to final passage in Congress. “This stimulus package is going to give us some relief, but it’s not going to change the underlying situation. We are in unprecedented times in our country, and we’re not immune to it even though we have had a really good run,” Barbour said  

Although the state will continue to see its income decline, Barbour said it is his intent to hold off on raising any taxes other than the 31-cent per pack cigarette tax increase approved by the Senate Finance Committee.

“I’m going to try to make sure that’s the only tax increase we have this year,” he said.

While Barbour said he had not foreseen a natural disaster like Hurricane Katrina ever causing the kind of damage in Mississippi it did in 2005, he added there has been a silver lining in the recovery effort when it comes to jobs.

“I think the spirit and character shown by the state of Mississippi in the wake of the worst natural disaster in American history has probably done more improvement to the image of Mississippi (than anything else) in my lifetime,” he said. “The effect today is a lot of people see us in a different light. People see Mississippi and they say, ‘these are the people I’d like to work for me.’”

Barbour left after a 15-minute speech, saying he had to head back to Jackson where he and his wife, Marsha, were spending the evening with their 3-year-old grandson. Before leaving, he challenged the roughly 200 people in attendance to consider “the role you can play to make this state — for the first time in many, many, generations — a place where mamas and grandmas can look at their children and grandchildren with confidence that they can stay in Mississippi because Mississippi is the place where opportunities are; because Mississippi is the place where jobs are; because Mississippi is the place where the future is.”

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Contact Steve Sanoski at ssanoski@vicksburgpost.com.