General studies senior Ashley Hay is one of many students with plans to leave Louisiana after graduation in May. Hay wants to use her three minors to go into medical and pharmaceutical sales and said she sees herself living in an area that is more “up and coming.”
“For that you need a larger economy,” she said. “Here they’re making absolutely nil.”
According to the Council for a Better Louisiana, between 1990 and 1999 about 140,000 more people left Louisiana than moved here. In the last three years alone, about 60,000 people left the state.
Many of the people leaving are college graduates who find better opportunities in other states, causing the exodus of people leaving Louisiana to commonly be called “brain drain.”
Brain drain and economic development go hand in hand for the gubernatorial candidates – improve the economy and students will have a reason to stay in the state.
Eliminating business taxes
All six major candidates – Kathleen Blanco, Hunt Downer, Randy Ewing, Richard Ieyoub, Bobby Jindal and Buddy Leach – agreed one way to get more business to Louisiana was by eliminating taxes on business debt and manufacturing equipment.
“The reason we have brain drain is the regressive, onerous business taxes running them out instead of bringing them into the state,” Downer said. “We need to change the business climate in our state so we can have a business-friendly state.”
Blanco said in her travels around the state, she talked to business owners who received letters from other states luring them to leave because they do not have the business taxes Louisiana does.
“It’s a costly thing to give up, but you have to believe that the money they save will be reinvested in Louisiana,” she said.
Jindal said Louisiana is the only state to tax company materials.
“Those two taxes are killing jobs and sending them to other states,” he said.
Where the candidates differ is what their plans are after eliminating business disincentives.
Blanco
Blanco said she plans to use a hard, consistent public relations initiative to entice businesses back to Louisiana.
“A lot of our success stories have not been successfully told,” she said. “That’s a piece of marketing and public relations.”
As lieutenant governor under Mike Foster, Blanco focused on increasing the tourism industry in the state, and said she plans to continue that initiative if elected.
However, Blanco said tourism should not be Louisiana’s only industry.
With Pennington Biomedical Research Center and cancer research centers in the state, Louisiana also is well poised to grow in biotechnology and medical research industries, Blanco said.
Downer
Once business taxes are eliminated, Downer said he will “hustle jobs,” starting in Houston by asking oil and gas companies what it will take to bring them back to Louisiana.
The rig count, which the oil and gas industry use to measure the economy, is higher in Texas, but Louisiana has more oil and gas to be recovered than Texas, he said.
Downer said he would entice companies to come back to the state by suspending royalty and severance taxes until they recover costs.
Then, when the tax does kick in, he would use the money from the tax for coastal restoration and improving the infrastructure for the industry.
The state also needs to do more to bring high-paying technology jobs to Louisiana, he said.
Downer also said he wants to use technology parks in New Orleans and on Florida Boulevard in Baton Rouge as hubs for growth.
Jindal
Aside from the taxes, the time it takes to build businesses in Louisiana needs to change, Jindal said.
With all the processes and permits, it can take a business 18 months to expand, he said.
Louisiana is at the top of the nation for the number of patents issued to people from here, but at the bottom of the list for manufacturing products, Jindal said.
“If we build on strengths, we can improve the economy,” he said. “If we create our own projects, we can add jobs.”
Bringing businesses to Louisiana also means having people for them to hire here. According to Jindal’s plan, this means developing the state’s community and technical college system and raising the quality of LSU.
“A strong flagship university is critical to our state,” he said. “It doesn’t make any sense to duplicate some of LSU’s specialized graduate school
programs at every school.”
This creates less competition among all and higher quality at each.
Ewing, Ieyoub and Leach
The Randy Ewing, Richard Ieyoub and Buddy Leach campaigns did not respond to phone calls before press deadline.
Check out their Web sites for more information: www.randyewing.com, www.richardieyoub.com, www.leach2003.com
Can they really make this happen?
Richard Omdal, a research analyst for the Public Affairs Research Council of Louisiana, said all the candidates have expertise that can help them improve the economy from the governor’s position, but it takes more than knowledge to be effective.
The governor has to be able to convince the Legislature to pass bills.
“Sometimes the governor doesn’t always get his way,” Omdal said.
Legislation gets more attention when the governor is pushing for it, but that doesn’t always mean it passes, he said.
Proposals that Omdal said may be difficult to get through the Legislature include oil and gas processing tax and raising the minimum wage. The oil and gas tax has been talked about for years and never passed, and raising the minimum wage brings up policy issues, he said.
According to Leach’s Web site, the number of poverty-level jobs in Louisiana is 37 percent, and he plans to fight to raise the minimum wage in the state well above the federal requirement.
However, sometimes, though rarely, legislation passes that no one thought would make it. One example, Omdal said, was the Stelly Tax Plan. Although it took two tries, people thought it would never pass, and many still hate it.
“Sometimes the impossible things can happen,” he said.
Music senior Josh Causey said the next governor can buy everyone candy if he just wants them to be happy, but if that person wants to improve Louisiana, it will take work.
“He needs to first and foremost show intelligent people they can live here,” Causey said.