Open for Business: AEDC Touts Accomplishments in Attracting, Growing Corporate Community

It is a good time to be Clint O’Neal, executive director at the Arkansas Economic Development Commission. Last year, the state continued what has become an annual parade of new projects from in-migrating companies and expansion by homegrown firms that ranks in multiple billions of dollars.

The prosperity is literally border to border. Steel is the new cotton in northeast Arkansas, where mill after new mill is popping up almost overnight, and the promise of untold lithium prosperity lies under the ground in El Dorado. Everywhere in between has something positive to report, as well.

Beyond that, the AEDC celebrated major wins in last year’s legislative session, which is expected to make the state even more competitive in growing, attracting and retaining companies creating jobs and providing opportunity for Arkansans statewide.

Arkansas Money & Politics sat down with O’Neal recently to get some insights into the state’s hot streak of late.

Clint O’Neal

Arkansas Money & Politics: You’ve been very vocal about the gains made by the 2025 legislative session. How did the commission prepare and mobilize for communicating its agenda before lawmakers?

Clint O’Neal: We put together what we call IMPACT, Improving Markets, Promoting Arkansas Commerce and Trade, which is basically an umbrella for several incentive programs, and it was very successful. We broke out the working group into three subcommittees. It was small business and entrepreneurship, traditional economic development, and site development. A lot of hard work went into that from community leaders across the state to create a lot of incentive programs that are going to be helpful.

For example, we noticed that we’re behind other states when it comes to site development. The reality of economic development projects are if you’re not investing in your facilities today, you might be closing them down five or 10 years from now. Other states set aside a pot of money to strengthen industrial sites to prepare the way for projects, and they have spent a whole lot of money on sites. We got our start in site development in 2023, at the beginning of the [Gov. Sarah Huckabee] Sanders administration. The governor’s office was in favor of this, and we had $10 million in that first year as a pilot program. We did 13 grants around the state across a pretty good geographic spread in small towns and in larger communities.

In the ‘25 session, the legislature passed $50 million, $25 million per year for the next two fiscal years, and this has really accelerated what we can do. We want communities in all corners of the state to be successful, we want to win projects everywhere, and I would say this modernization incentive will ultimately fulfill that.

The grand opening speakers prepare to cut the ribbon on the new Owens Corning facility.

AMP: The headliner industries for incentive programs recently have been data centers and the budding lithium industry. What were some other beneficiaries that maybe didn’t get as much publicity?

O’Neal: The incentive working group decided we have great incentives, but we need more. We need to do more for existing Arkansas companies that have been loyal to the state. Maybe they have a multistate footprint, and they’re thinking of making a major expansion at one of their facilities. How do we incentivize those companies to make those investments here rather than somewhere else? We modernized the program to provide up to a 5-percent tax credit that can be used to offset sales or income tax on capital investment projects of $25 million-plus.

We also did a corporate headquarters relocation incentive. We have reduced taxes many times, three times in the Sanders administration, but until we get to the point where we’re at zero, there’s still going to be people that say, “Well, Texas is more favorable,” or “Tennessee’s more favorable.” With this, if there’s a corporate headquarters that’s looking to relocate, we want to create an even playing field where, at least for the first five years, there’s no corporate income tax liability and then a sliding scale after that.

Raytheon Ribbon Cutting

AMP: Economic development is a multifaceted term that can be applied internally and externally to a variety of business factors. How does the AEDC maintain a balance among those elements?

O’Neal: We boil down what we do at AEDC, really, to two main customer groups: helping communities and helping companies. On the company side, it’s a three-legged stool of entrepreneurship, existing companies and recruiting new ones. On the community side, it’s things like site-development program funds that we can deploy to help communities make their industrial sites more attractive, extending infrastructure site prep. We want prospects to come in and find more attractive sites than they do in other states so that they’ll move forward and create jobs.

We also help communities with things like rural development grants, general-assistance grants. We’re training local leaders how to provide services to entrepreneurs. We’re putting half a dozen communities through a thing called Retail Academy with retail strategies. Although we do not incentivize retail projects, we still want our communities to have the tools to be able to recruit retail operations.

We always try to think of the short game and the long game in economic development. In the short game, of course, I want to be on a stage tomorrow, announcing new jobs and momentum and all that, but it’s also about the long-term view of economic development. We’ve got to make sure that we’re not looking up 10 years from now, and a company is saying, “We’re closing this facility,” and we trace that back to something we maybe could have done about that.

AMP: States — sometimes cities, but definitely states and collections of states — over time, get known for something. The Rust Belt is a good example. Silicon Valley is another good example. What is Arkansas becoming the state of choice for? Is there an industry that is particularly well suited to be here?

O’Neal: Steel, aerospace and defense, forestry, and ag tech continue to be the industries where we see growth. Mississippi County is the largest steel-production county in America. I think the same could be said for timber and ag tech, with projects like Green Bay Packaging announcing a $1 billion-plus project in Conway County and Weyerhaeuser announcing a $500 million project outside Monticello.

Unfortunate world conflicts lead to demand for [defense] products that need to be made somewhere, and many products involved in the Ukraine conflict or assisting the U.S.’ partners, such as Israel, are made right here in Arkansas at the Highland Industrial Park in Camden. Some of the expansions down there, I think, have really given us a name in aerospace and defense, and you can combine that with aviation and the work that Falcon Jet’s doing.

Then there are emerging industries like lithium. The Smackover Formation runs through Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi, but Arkansas has really jumped out there as a leader between setting royalty rates, the work of the Arkansas Oil and Gas Commission, and we’ve had two lithium innovation summits. The last one hosted over 900 from nine countries and 28 states.

Motor manufactured by NIDEC.

AMP: Arkansas appears to be benefiting from a general migration of companies from larger metropolitan areas to smaller, more rural states. What is the attraction for them to do that, be it a smaller state in general or Arkansas in particular?

O’Neal: I’ll start with the steel industry. David Burritt, the CEO of U.S. Steel, made the comment when he was in Little Rock a couple years ago that when they acquired Big River Steel, they were actually slated to do a major project in their home state of Pennsylvania. He said they could permit, construct and start making steel in the state of Arkansas before he could get the same project permitted in the state of Pennsylvania. I mean, of course we have to have sound environmental permitting processes, but you can still give great customer service and move quickly.

Gov. Sanders has definitely made it clear that we’re charging towards lowering taxes but doing it in a way that companies can have confidence that we also have healthy reserves and a balanced budget to go with it. That sends this signal that we are able to provide services to the public, as we should in state government, and we can also afford responsible cuts to our taxes. There’s some other states out there that are kind of flirting on the line of being able to provide services, and they’ve got to make up for it somehow, and that invariably is by raising taxes. That’s not the direction that we’re going in Arkansas.

All of that makes up an overall business-friendly climate not just in terms of tax climate [but] in terms of doing the right things in economic development, workforce development. It’s a holistic view of championing business rather than taking the mindset of regulating business that we have here. That’s a big part of it.