Won’t Be Leaving After All: Rockwell : Industry: Company says its executive erred in warning that higher utility rates could force a departure from Anaheim.

Rockwell International officials on Wednesday rushed to deny that the company might move its 4,000 employees to another state, saying a Rockwell executive was wrong when he made that warning to the City Council Tuesday.

“There are no plans to leave Anaheim,” Rockwell spokesman George J. Torres said. The company had not cleared Richard B. Clark, facilities design manager, to read the prepared statement in which he warned that the entire operation might join its other plants in Georgia, Iowa or Texas if Anaheim hiked utility rates. Clark’s comments prompted Rockwell’s president of defense and electronics, John McLuckey, to deliver an early-morning address to Anaheim employees assuring them that the company had no plans to move.

“Rockwell has been in Anaheim for 30 years and has a large engineering work force here,” McLuckey said in a prepared statement. “California, and especially Southern California, continues to have the technical work force required in our business. We also have a large investment in laboratories and facilities at our Anaheim complex.”

McLuckey said Clark was “attempting to compare Rockwell’s costs of doing business in Southern California to other states to show how all businesses, not just Rockwell, face challenges in competing with out-of-state businesses.”

“The context of Clark’s prepared statement was not formally authorized by Rockwell senior management,” McLuckey said in the release.

Clark, a 30-year Rockwell employee who manages the company’s utility conservation programs and one of several company members of the Anaheim Chamber of Commerce, was at work Wednesday and said he was not disciplined for his unauthorized remarks.

“I was doing my job just like you do yours,” Clark said before referring all other inquiries to Torres.

Clark’s statement also blindsided city officials who voted Tuesday night to place a series of ballot issues before the voters in November, including an initiative that would allow the transfer of an additional $9 million from the city’s Utility Department to its depleted general fund.

The transfer proposal has sparked fear in the business community that utility rates would be raised to make up for the department’s lost revenue.

In his remarks to the council, Clark predicted that such a transfer could raise electric and water rates by up to 4%.

“Our plants in Georgia, Iowa and Texas all have lower electricity costs than Anaheim,” Clark told the council, “and most of our manufacturing is already done there. Do not force us to take our engineering and marketing there, too.”

On Wednesday, an angry Mayor Fred Hunter said he had not been contacted by Rockwell’s senior management about its opposition to the issue.

“Where does he get off saying this?” Hunter said, referring to the unauthorized council appearance. “It (utility rate increase) is totally untrue. Who is this guy anyway?”

Councilman Bob D. Simpson said that also was the first time he had specific positions voiced by Rockwell regarding the revenue transfer.

“It was the first time I heard them be that specific,” Simpson said. “I don’t respond well to threats.”

With its more than 4,000 jobs, Rockwell has long ranked second only to Disneyland among Anaheim employers. Any real threat of losing that job base, Simpson said, would have an enormous impact on the local economy.

“It’s impossible to measure what the effects of something like that would be. I would hate to use the word devastating to describe what it could do.”

In Wednesday’s company-approved statement, McLuckey acknowledged that the “costs of doing business in Anaheim and the state of California are high and a major concern of the corporation.”

“However, we remain committed to maintaining our presence in Anaheim,” the president said.

Nonetheless, Councilman Irv Pickler said Clark’s statement has “hurt” the city’s efforts to attract and retain businesses.

“You would think when speaking for a company like Rockwell, you’d check with the people in power.”