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Spring, 2005
 Content: • The reign of the jobs czar
The inauguration of Mayor James M. Ruberto in 2004 also brought to prominence his campaign manager, Interprint CEO William M. Hines Sr. Never mind that Ruberto is a Democrat and Hines a Republican. The two share the belief that struggling Pittsfield can pull itself up by the bootstraps if business is cultivated and new jobs are created. Several weeks after taking office, Ruberto named Hines to lead "Jobs for Pittsfield," the mayor's jobs-creation task force. The stated goal of the initiative is to create 150 new jobs a year for five years by assisting existing industry and attracting new companies. Last March, Hines was elected to the board of the Colonial Theatre Association, which is managing a $20 million restoration of the South Street theater building. In June, he was elected chairman of the Pittsfield Economic Development Authority, charged with redeveloping the General Electric Co. site into the William Stanley Business Park. Hines also serves on the boards of the Pittsfield Economic Revitaization Corp. and the Associated Industries of Massachusetts. He is a trustee of Hancock Shaker Village. All the while, Hines, 58, has headed Interprint, which he founded in 1985 as the sister company of a German manufacturer. Interprint manufactures decorative papers for the laminating industry, and currently employs 115 people. The company is beginning a move from its present location at 125 Peck's Road to a new, $23 million plant off Route 41. Last October, the groundbreaking for the new plant was picketed by labor activists unhappy with the use of out-of-state construction management and architectural firms. Outside of Interprint and his official capacities, Hines is the major shareholder of a family-owned corporation, Hines Site Group, that last fall purchased Stevens World of Carpets and Berkshire Cleaning Contractors. Managed by Hines' stepson, Bill Murray, the group has branched into two new businesses -- Berkshire Closet Options and Berkshire Garage Options -- that install closet and garage systems. Hines was interviewed by Eagle Business Editor Bill Carey in late January. QUESTION: As a registered Republican, are you active with the party in Berkshire County? ANSWER: Not the local party, because I disagree with the local party. I think they could do a lot more than what they've done. Of course, they’re going to turn that around and say, if we had more people involved like yourself who are active, it would be a stronger party. I talked to all the candidates that they fielded recently, and the quality just wasn’t there. It seems like they could have fielded a better group of candidates to run for office. Q: Do you have political ambitions? A: No. Q: Was there any conflict in that you were the campaign chairman for a Republican, Gary Grunin [in 2001] when he ran for mayor, and then were the right-hand man for Jim Ruberto, a Democrat? Do party affiliations matter at the local level? A: At the city level, I don't think you can even consider party affiliations. Obviously, the city offices are nonaffiliated, anyway. If we decide the line so closely between Republicans and Democrats, not a whole lot would get done here. I even like to say that some of my best friends are Democrats. Q: Who instigated your many different roles? Has [Ruberto] encouraged you to get involved, or have you been pushing him to get involved? A: Well, first of all, I was involved in the community for many years. I think a lot of it stems from Interprint and how we position Interprint, not only in our industry, but in the community. I think it's important that we have a presence because, from a selfish standpoint, it helps us in our recruitment efforts. People read about Interprint and all the expansion and development that we’re doing, and truthfully, it helps us to get the cream of the crop of applicants when we’re looking to add people. But as far as things since the mayor's gotten involved -- I thought it was important that we have a new mayor. That’s why, after the Gary Grunin defeat in the primaries four years ago, I went over and talked to [Ruberto]. I had never met him. And I liked his ideas and his plans, so I worked four years ago for him after the primary. The second time around, he really had no campaign chairman -- people that could help him and advise him in different areas, business-related stuff and today, what’s happening with the city.
Q: Are you going to help [Ruberto] for a third campaign? A: Yes, there's no doubt about it, as long as he wants me to help. As far as I know, he’s still interested, in fact, I know he is still interested, in the economic development of the city of Pittsfield, and that’s where I concentrate my efforts. Q: How much time, as a percentage, would you say you're spending on city affairs, and is that in any way distracting you from running Interprint? A: First of all, Interprint, with the management I have in place here, can actually function without me. So that has allowed me time to help with the city and community development stuff. I would say, if I put a percentage on it, it's 50-50 [including] things like the Hancock Shaker Village and Colonial Theatre boards. I’m not sure how my shareholders will read that, but that’s OK. In fact, we just had our most successful year ever at Interprint. Our sales were the best in the history of our company. We produced more printed pounds this year than we ever have before. We had a very good profitable year, but it was slightly below our best year, which was 1999, when we had not so much price pressure as we have now, from foreign competition. But by any measure, our profitably is very, very good. Q: Who does run the ship at Interprint when you're away? A: My immediate management staff consists of Sandra Zink, our HR director; Bill Hines Jr. is our vice president of sales and marketing. Dave Field has been with me almost from day one -- he came with me from Mead [Paper] when I started the company many years ago. He's our vice president of operations. David Murray is our technical manager, Roland Morin is our manufacturing manager and Jens Bauer is my CFO. Q: Any desire on your part to have your son take over someday? A: Yes. The way that our German parent company likes to have their businesses set up nowadays is what they call the "four eyes" concept. That's basically having two, co-CEOs at all their locations. Of course, that can’t happen here as long as I’m here because I started the business for them. But there’s no doubt in my mind that after I’m ready to give up the reins that we will have two CEOs here. One may be concentrating on the commercial side of the business, which I suspect would be Bill Jr., and one concentrating on the operations and finance. Certainly, Jens Bauer or Dave Field would be strong considerations for this. I won’t have the final choice, but I’ll certainly have a strong recommendation before I’m ready to hang it up. Q: How influential is Germany in making decisions here? A: The final decision, because they are the shareholder, is obviously with them. But they also understand how successful we've been and the formula that we’ve put together to be successful, so my recommendation would carry a lot of clout. Q: What is the ownership stake in Germany? A: There's a family-owned holding company, WIH Investment [for] Wrede Industry Holding. They own Interprint and some other companies. The way we’re structured is that Interprint Germany is the shareholder for all the subsidiaries, such as ourselves. Our stock is owned by Interprint Germany and their stock is owned by the holding company. Q: Do you speak German? A: No. I understand it when they're speaking, especially when they’re speaking business. I tried once, and I just didn’t have the ear for it. But the international business language is English, so no matter where we’re operating around the world, whether it’s Russia or Poland or China or Germany, we’re speaking English. Q: What do you do in your free time? A: Well, this afternoon I'm heading down to the Cape, just to check on our Cape house [in Eastham] and do a little work. ... As far as my wife [Mary Ellen], she controls the domestic side. She took an early retirement a few years ago, from being a nurse practitioner. I find time to get home, and I’ve given up a lot of my international travel. I was one of the two managing directors of our international business, and it just wasn't working out [with] all the travel. ... But every once in a while, I still have to go to an international meeting, which I did last week in Malaysia. From driveway to driveway, from the time I left my home to checking in at the hotel in Kuala Lumpur -- 33 hours, and I was there for about 14 hours’ worth of business. Q: At the [Jan. 18] Mayor's Manufacturers’ Lunch, you reported that manufacturers added 235 new jobs in 2004. Based on that, are you prepared to call Jobs for Pittsfield a success at this point, or is it a work in progress? A: A work in progress. It depends on how you want to define Jobs for Pittsfield, and probably the best way to define it is not to. If you recall, when we rolled out Jobs for Pittsfield, part of the emphasis was not only on recruiting new businesses to the area but also helping local businesses to grow, because we certainly didn't want to forget about them. The companies that are here, a lot of them are successful. They’ve been growing, expanding, adding jobs. ... One of the biggest things, I think, as far as government and economic development are concerned is: 'Don’t get in the way.’ A lot of times, governments [create] a lot of roadblocks to creating jobs and business. [Under Ruberto] we didn’t put any burdens on [employers] that would prevent them from being successful, especially the manufacturing companies. The manufacturers’ tax rates actually went down [this year]. Manufacturing is not paying any more taxes at the end of the year than it did last year. Q: Did you influence that policy? A: No. The mayor and I didn't sit down and say, 'Let’s think about manufacturing and how we can help them out.’ Other than, we realized right from the very beginning that we wanted a manufacturing base here, that we wanted them to be successful. Q: Were you surprised at the groundbreaking last October [for Interprint's new plant], that labor activists were demonstrating out front? A: I had heard about it the day before, and to answer your question, yes, I was surprised. Certainly there's no better company in Pittsfield or the area that has over the years employed local people in good-paying jobs, including the contractors. ... When we went to put out the bid for the [Route 41] site, we put a request out to a number of construction management firms. There was nobody actually located in Pittsfield that could manage that project with the size it was -- didn’t have the experience. And we really wanted to have somebody with the experience of doing manufacturing buildings that could take the architectural plan and implement it without us having to do it ourselves. We interviewed five companies, and FIP [of Cheshire, Conn.] came out as the most professional, the most experienced, and in hindsight it was the best choice. ... To me [the demonstration] was a crazy thing for them to do, and unjustified, totally. Q: Last but not least, why do you care? What drives you to participate at the level you do? What is your motivation? A: I'm a firm believer that if you’re going to live and work in a community, if you have the means to do it, rather than sit back and criticize everybody else for what they do or don’t do, you have to get involved and make it better. That’s my motivation.  RETURN TO TOP |
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