Scott Walker wants to overhaul Wisconsin’s Commerce Department in much the same way Gov. Mitch Daniels did Indiana’s agency.
That would mean no more responsibilities for checking carnival rides. No more certifying plumbers or inspecting elevators. No more responsibilities for overseeing housing issues.
Instead, those tasks would be spun off to other state agencies so the Commerce Department could be turned into an economic development agency focused solely on encouraging job growth and attracting new businesses to the state. It also would become a public-private partnership.
“The idea being that we wanted to take economic development out of the political arena and create a positive business atmosphere and an entity that was strictly focused on growing jobs in Indiana,” said Daniels spokeswoman Jane Jankowski.
Walker has included overhauling the Commerce Department as one of his top priorities after taking office next month, promising to tackle that task as part of his emergency session on jobs in the early days of his administration. The governor-elect has not detailed exactly what he has in mind for the new agency.
But the Indiana model provides a handy guide to Walker’s line of thinking when it comes to the agency.
Walker has pledged to “fundamentally reshape” the state Commerce Department and hinted he would follow the lead of Daniels, who took office in 2005. Walker complained that under the current structure the department “unfortunately over the years has spent more and more time regulating commerce than it is promoting commerce.”
Blair West, spokeswoman for the successor to the Indiana’s Commerce Department, the Indiana Economic Development Corp., said the old agency oversaw housing and urban development, tourism and even recycling.
When Daniels took office, he first issued an executive order creating a secretary of commerce to oversee coordination of the state’s economic development efforts.
Legislation was then introduced to create the IEDC and abolish the old Commerce Department along with things like the state’s film commission, the business modernization and technology corporation, the Indiana economic development council, and the enterprise zone board.
All of those functions were placed under the IEDC with a new 12-member board of directors, while old responsibilities for things like tourism and community development were placed under the lieutenant governor.
- See the executive order
- See background on the bill, including its language
- See the 2009 IEDC annual report
The IEDC is operated with state tax dollars. But it also collects private donations to fund things like entertaining potential businesses, traveling to trade shows, and doing a series of sales trips during the year in which officials hit various cities to host companies and consultants to network.
Things like trade missions are also funded with private donations to the IEDC from local development groups, utilities, private businesses and others. The money is disclosed each year in the IEDC’s annual report.
Jankowski said the setup allows the governor to act as the state’s chief economic development officer with the board setting strategy and direction. It also hands out performance-based incentives funded with public tax dollars.
Jankowski pointed to Indiana landing a Honda plant in 2006 as an example of the success of the public-private partnership. While Honda was touring various sites for the assembly facility, company officials expressed interest in having an interstate interchange built near a site. State officials quickly moved to ensure that could happen and tapped funds from Daniels’ decision to lease the Indiana Toll Road across northern Indiana to complete the project.
— By JR Ross
WisBusiness.com
