Reshaping Louisiana into a business

For too long, Louisiana has taken a back seat to other southern states when it comes to attracting new, high-paying jobs. In fact, I have often said that our greatest export isn’t our agriculture products, petrochemicals, wood products, or even our oil and gas; our greatest export far too often has been our people – the sons and daughters of Louisiana who have felt like they had to leave our state to find greater economic opportunities in places like Houston, Dallas, or Atlanta.

Now is the time for that to change. The time has come for Louisiana to take its rightful place as a leader in business investment and economic opportunity.

Since taking office in January, we have taken aggressive steps to improve Louisiana’s economic competitiveness and to attract new jobs with good salaries and benefits.

We adopted some of the strongest ethics laws in the country, an effort targeted at eliminating one of the top two obstacles to new business investment in Louisiana identified by business executives nationwide. Next, we eliminated burdensome business taxes that hurt both businesses and families across the state. We also reformed our state’s workforce development system to improve the effectiveness of our community and technical colleges, provide turnkey workforce solutions to expanding and relocating businesses, and ensuring that our workforce programs are driven by real business needs.

These efforts are already starting to pay off.

First, we have seen terrific results from our new focus on business retention and expansion as we continue to make our existing employers our top priority. With a state grant for infrastructure, Coca-Cola committed to relocate its existing operations from another state, increasing the size of its new plant in Baton Rouge by $93 million and creating nearly 115 new jobs. Cameron Valve, a leading manufacturer of high-end valves for the oil-and-gas industry with facilities around the world, committed to expanding its Ville Platte facility by 110 jobs and $49 million in capital investment.

At Chennault International Airport in Lake Charles, state infrastructure grants are helping two companies to expand – Aeroframe is retaining 300 jobs and adding 50 new jobs, while Northrop Grumman will retain over 200 jobs and add 80 new jobs. The Shaw Group (Shaw), a Baton Rouge-based Fortune 500 firm, committed to keep its headquarters in Louisiana for at least 15 years and to create 1,500 new, professional / non-craft jobs.

Gulf Island Fabrication, a worldwide leader in the fabrication of drilling and production platforms, has committed to launch its 200-job expansion in Louisiana. And Edison Chouest Offshore, one of the world’s most technologically advanced offshore vessel service companies, announced plans to construct a 1,000-job, $100-million shipyard in Houma. These expansion projects will all provide jobs with salaries averaging roughly $50,000 per year plus benefits.

Southern Recycling, which was forced to select a new location due to the closure of the of Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet, committed to stay in the New Orleans region while retaining 150 existing jobs and creating 100 new jobs, and Criterion committed to investing $250 million and adding 53 jobs at its facility in West Baton Rouge Parish.

All of these projects could have located elsewhere, but they chose Louisiana because state and local leaders pursued them just as aggressively as we recruit new companies.

While our top priority is supporting our existing businesses, we also are aggressively attracting new companies and new industries to our state, so that we can continue to grow and diversify our economy.

Louisiana is now among the top three states in the country for film productions. We are seeking to match that success in the digital media sector, starting with Electronic Arts (EA) – the world’s leading interactive entertainment software company – which recently announced it will launch its global quality assurance center in partnership with Louisiana State University.

EA is committed to becoming an active advisor to our statewide workforce development and industry cultivation efforts for the digital media sector. This partnership will benefit not only Baton Rouge but also Shreveport/ Bossier, Lafayette, New Orleans, and other Louisiana communities that are pursuing this exciting growth industry.

We are also becoming a national leader in the coming global nuclear energy resurgence. Westinghouse and the Shaw Group announced the Port of Lake Charles will be the site for the first manufacturing facility in the U.S. focused on building modular components for new and modified nuclear reactors. This $100-million facility will create over 1,400 jobs averaging $50,000 per year plus benefits.

Zagis USA announced that it will invest $75 million to construct two cotton spinning facilities in Louisiana that together will create 160 new jobs.

This is just one more example of a new value-added manufacturer choosing to locate in Louisiana.

For decades, Louisiana suffered as headquarters pulled up stakes and moved to other larger markets like Houston. We are beginning to reverse that trend. Albemarle recently became Louisiana’s fifth Fortune 1000 company when it announced a move of its headquarters from Richmond, Virginia to Baton Rouge.

Their announcement was soon followed by others. Bercen, Inc. is moving its headquarters and research and development activities from Rhode Island to Denham Springs. And Horizon Entertainment is moving its headquarters from Atlanta to New Orleans.

Collectively these three headquarters projects will offer jobs with salaries averaging over $100,000 per year plus benefits. These are the kinds of jobs that create meaningful opportunities to keep Louisiana’s talented young professionals right here at home.

Altogether our business retention, expansion, and recruitment efforts thus far will result in at least 5,200 direct new jobs, 2,150 retained jobs, and $750 million in new capital investment, not to mention billions in new sales for Louisiana’s small businesses. Including new jobs at small businesses that will expand to support these new projects, at least 11,500 total new jobs will be created. That is 11,500 jobs to help keep our sons and daughters here in Louisiana, and to spur on further investment in our state in the future.

In addition to recruiting new business investment and jobs to Louisiana, we also are creating thousands of new jobs by investing in our unique regional economic assets.

Examples of recent investments include the Napoleon II container terminal at the Port of New Orleans, the new clinical research building at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, transportation and infrastructure investments that support growth and diversification of Barksdale Air Force Base, the Federal City project in New Orleans, and state infrastructure investment that helped attract the federally-funded Regional Training Institute for the National Guard at Camp Minden.

As communities all across Louisiana continue to work to recover and build back from Hurricanes Gustav and Ike, we cannot stop here. We are working to ensure that Louisiana becomes one of the best places in the world in which to pursue a rewarding career and raise a family.

In the not-too-distant future the day will come when states like Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Texas, and others will complain about losing their sons and daughters to the vibrant, rapidly growing economy in the great state of Louisiana.