The final report of the Strategic Initiative for Economic Growth and an Executive Summary was delivered to Governor Nixon on April 11. The blueprint includes a specific strategy with five tactical goals on workforce development.
According to David Kerr, director for Missouri’s Department of Economic Development, this work concludes nearly 10 months of work of the Executive Advisory Committee, the 41 member Steering Committee, the six Regional Planning Teams, Market Street Services, MERIC, the 41 persons that submitted white papers, and numerous Missourians that participated in surveys and provided additional comments and suggestions. The Hawthorn Foundation funded the project.
To help design the strategy, planners used input from regional focus groups and white papers from eight subject matter experts in education and two in workforce development. Jasen Jones, director of the Southwest Missouri Workforce Investment Board, presented a white paper on behalf of the WIB titled, High-Octane Workforce Development as a Catalyst for Regional Economic Growth. This approach helped drive the launch of a new Workforce Committee with the Missouri Economic Development Council to help better integrate workforce and economic development stakeholders statewide.
From the workforce perspective, the strategy states that Missouri will attract, develop and retain a workforce with the education and skills to succeed in a 21st-Century economy. Overall, the workforce strategy is supported by five tactical goals:
- Tactic 1: Develop a tuition forgiveness program for qualifying Missouri high school graduates to attend Missouri colleges and universities.
- Tactic 2: Develop a statewide assessment to measure and certify core competency skills of Missouri’s graduating high school seniors. Assessment would be informed by college and career‐readiness criteria.
- Tactic 3: Partner with the state’s colleges and universities to ensure students remain in Missouri after graduation.
- Tactic 4: Develop optimized and coordinated cluster based career‐training pipelines, protocols and assessments.
- Tactic 5: Provide a streamlined workforce training incentive for expansion and relocation prospects coordinated through Missouri’s community college network.
The final report and the executive summary can be obtained at the project website. The Targeted Cluster and Marketing Analysis, which was posted on the website about two months ago, is also an important component of the Initiative.
The purpose of the Initiative was to “identify specific strategic and tactical plans which must be accomplished over the next five years to transform Missouri’s economy for sustainable growth in the 21st Century.” The scope of the Initiative was to:
- Develop a focused set of key strategies, which must be data-driven and have a statewide view, but recognize the uniqueness of Missouri’s regions;
- For each strategy, develop tactical implementation plans;
- Identify the high growth industry clusters that will drive the Missouri economy; and,
- Concentrate on “primary” businesses (which are those that mostly sell and compete outside the local market area) due to their impact on the economy. Other sectors, including tourism, military installations, agriculture and others critical to Missouri’s economy, are unique and were not included in this study.
In his memo, Kerr outlined several actions already underway as a result of the initiative. The groundwork is being paved to enact the other recommendations
Legislative Initiatives
At the meeting on November 30, 2010, based on the surveys of the Regional Planning Teams, the Steering Committee recommended the development of three legislative initiatives to enact certain key strategies. These recommendations led to the creation of the Compete Missouri business incentives and workforce incentives, which was introduced in SB 279, SB 296, and HB 670. The Steering Committee also recommended the passage of the Missouri Science and Innovation Reinvestment Act (MOSIRA), which was introduced in SB 79, HB 467 and HB 468. Both are still under consideration in this session, and DED is hopeful of passage.
State Small Business Credit Initiative Funding
Based on the recommendations of the Plan to develop funding for small business and growth/technology companies, Governor Nixon submitted an application for $27 million to the US Department of Treasury, and on March 22, 2011, the funding was approved. The funding involves $10 million for “conventional” business loans by the Department of Economic Development, and $17 million in seed and venture capital investments by the Missouri Technology Corporation. More information and a link to the applications can be found online.
“On behalf of Governor Nixon, I want to thank you for your valuable insight and forward thinking which we believe will have a significant impact on Missouri’s economy,” Kerr concluded. “Taken in full, this report represents a solid roadmap to jobs, growth, and prosperity in the 21st Century.”