WisBusiness FRI News Summary

— Proposals to shake up WEDC “could be counter-productive to the significant operational improvements” the agency has already made, an outside consultant report found.

Instead, the Center for Regional Economic Competitiveness report lists as it top recommendation that stakeholders should recognize the state’s “best option is to help WEDC function effectively.”

“WEDC has made significant progress in addressing operational issues previously identified,” the report found. “Calls for another reorganization of the state economic development effort distract attention from the mission of helping Wisconsin businesses and communities prosper and could potentially re-create the very conditions that led to past mistakes.”

A draft of the report, presented to WEDC’s board of directors yesterday in Appleton, follows calls from Dems to scrap the agency. They have said the agency’s brand is “damaged beyond repair” and want to replace it with a hybrid agency focused on “family-supporting jobs.” Assembly GOP leaders have also hinted they’re open to looking at proposals that would change WEDC.

Mark Hogan, who started as WEDC’s CEO in October, said the CREC recommendations show the agency should continue under its current structure.

“My view is making change for the sake of change is rarely, if ever, productive,” Hogan said. “And in the case of WEDC, such a move would detract from the great many successes this organization has achieved in helping Wisconsin’s businesses grow and fulfill their goals of maintaining and creating family-supporting jobs.”

WEDC is paying less than $175,000 to CREC, which got the contract in June and interviewed WEDC management and staff members, key stakeholders in state government, the state’s business community and economic development officials in other states.

— The report also found WEDC needs to better articulate its mission and partner with other state agencies and stakeholders to accomplish its goals.

And it called for an increase in WEDC staff. The consultants noted WEDC’s 108 full-time employee positions are “substantially below” the 350 positions at the agency’s predecessor, the Department of Commerce.

WEDC also needs to improve its data collection and reporting processes, pay closer attention to outcomes for its largest award recipients and focus on developing industry clusters over individual solutions for companies, according to the report.

A key to the discussion, the report found, is convincing the public that there’s more to economic development than the “exclusive focus on job creation that has dominated past conversations,” especially as Wisconsin’s unemployment rate continues hitting new lows.

WEDC and the public also need to move away from looking at individual company news as signs of success or failure, the report suggested. Calling the Oscar Mayer layoffs “beyond the state’s control” and the expansion at Oshkosh Corporation “extraordinarily rare,” CREC suggested WEDC’s focus should be on helping communities “make the economic transition.”

Wisconsin has a $268 billion economy, and WEDC’s awards won’t be able to significantly impact that number, the report said.

“Truly effective economic development is a process, not a series of single events or project ‘wins.’ … Economic development today must focus less on solving the problems of specific businesses through individual transactions and more on creating opportunities for clusters of clients, companies, and communities to compete in the private marketplace,” the report said.

See the report:

http://wispolitics.com/1006/151217WEDCreport.pdf

— Wisconsin dropped to 37th in private sector job creation from June 2014 to June 2015, seeing job growth of 1.3 percent during that time, new federal data shows.

The quarterly data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which isn’t as timely as monthly data but is more complete, shows Wisconsin added 30,759 during the one-year period.

That compares to the 39,624 private sector jobs Wisconsin added from March 2014 to March 2015, according to the previous round of quarterly data from the BLS. That had amounted to a 1.72 percent increase at the time, which put the state at 30th nationwide.

But the state’s unemployment rate dropped slightly to 4.2 percent in November, compared to 4.3 percent in October. The state’s Department of Workforce Development, which released the monthly BLS data, said November’s unemployment rate is the lowest in Wisconsin since 1992 and is below the national rate of 5 percent.

The state’s labor participation rate of 67.8 percent is also higher than the national labor participation rate of 62.5 percent, DWD said.

Wisconsin lost 3,800 private sector jobs in November, according to preliminary data, but the private sector jobs gain in October was revised from 1,500 to 16,600.

See the DWD release:

http://wisbusiness.com/1008/151217DWD.pdf

— The Water Council and UW-Milwaukee participated in a White House Roundtable on Water Innovation.

Yesterday’s effort showed the White House “ratcheting up its engagement on the issue,” said Water Council President and CEO Dean Amhaus, who spoke at the opening panel.

It’s not Amhaus’ first time at the White House. Amhaus, along with Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett and other industry and university leaders, met with White House staff in July 2014 to update them on the Water Council’s work.

The Obama administration also announced a new Natural Resource Investment Center that aims to get private fundings to “help meet the country’s massive water infrastructure and conservation needs.”

See more:

http://wisbusiness.com/index.iml?Article=361801

— A fundraising campaign at UW-Madison helped the university’s surgery department triple its endowed chairs and professorships.

The department raised $17.5 million in the 2014-15 academic year, which will boost its endowed professorships and chairs from five to 16. The fundraising campaign, which was helped by the Morgridge family’s matching funds promise, will also lead to a pancreatic cancer tissue bank and innovative ways to train surgeons.

See more:

http://www.med.wisc.edu/news-events/uw-surgery-department-triples-endowed-chairs-and-professorships-in-2015/47362