Rick Richard Candidate for 15th Senate District Phone: (608) 322-9975
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE September 10th, 2010 |
Wisconsin's Business Climate Has Created a State Tipping Point; It's Time to Be Bold and Be Competitive in Attracting Job Providers
State Senate 15 candidate Rick Richard of Janesville issued the following statement on Be Bold Wisconsin: The Wisconsin Competitiveness Study
Earlier this year, electric car maker CODA Automotive chose Ohio for the location of a lithium ion battery plant, resulting in the creation of 1,000 new skilled manufacturing jobs there. Wisconsin didn’t gain these family-supporting jobs, rather several other states recruited CODA and offered incentives, including Ohio’s winning offer of a $100M package.
In recent years, Honda chose Indiana for a new vehicle assembly plant and 2,000 manufacturing jobs. Caterpillar picked Texas workers to build engines, adding 1,400 jobs there, and IBM expanded in Iowa with 1,400 good paying jobs for citizens in Dubuque.
Whether we are head to head with Ohio, Iowa, Texas, or virtually any other state for new jobs, Wisconsin is simply not competitive in attracting and landing large job providers. Adopting recommendations in the Be Bold Wisconsin report will precisely address Wisconsin’s shortcomings in these areas of both business attraction and state incentives for industry investment.
Transforming Wisconsin’s Department of Commerce, where now only one in ten department employees is actually engaged in business attraction and recruiting, is past due. The Be Bold plan will restructure the Department of Commerce into a new private-public entity that will help deliver a strong economic development strategy.
After employers start placing Wisconsin on their site location short list, a new Innovation Fund will provide incentives needed to land the company and the private-sector jobs. Indeed, when company site brokers talk with states, monetary incentives are often the first consideration discussed.
As we are now in the era of hyper-competitive state business climates and incentive packages, I support this plan as part of needed sweeping reform in Wisconsin government. The plan provides tools for landing large job providers, while complementing and bolstering local governments’ existing efforts. Our state is at a tipping point; let’s make it a bright future filled with opportunity.
