Bolling takes on job creation

Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling tackles Virginia's sluggish economy

He’s been a successful insurance executive in Richmond for more than 30 years, but Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling says his childhood experience profoundly informs his views about the importance of steady work.

“My dad chased jobs in the coalfields. It was kind of like being in the military,” said Bolling, who is Gov. Bob McDonnell’s designated point man in the effort to turn around Virginia’s sluggish economy. Bolling says his family lived in six different towns in Virginia, West Virginia and Ohio by the time he was 9 years old.
  
“It certainly helped me to understand the importance of having a good and stable job, because in those days a lot of coal miners literally moved from community to community, depending on where the next job was,” Bolling said.

As Virginia’s chief jobs creation officer, Bolling is responsible for shepherding the governor’s economic development initiatives through the General Assembly and helping economic development officials recruit new business and industry to Virginia. 

Even as lawmakers are struggling to fill a multibillion dollar gap in the state budget, Bolling will urge the legislature to approve $65 million in new state spending for the administration’s “Jobs and Opportunity Agenda.” Budget amendments totaling $50 million would boost state promotion of tourism and filmmaking, open new Virginia trade offices in China and India, create development-ready “mega-sites” and more than double the money available to the governor to entice businesses and industries to locate in Virginia. The remaining $15 million would pay for a package of 20 laws creating or expanding state tax breaks and other incentives to boost job creation.

“We know that we’ve asked the General Assembly to make a significant investment in these programs; we know that’s very challenging in these tough economic times,” Bolling said. “But this is an area where we think you have to spend money to make money. And if we can get the economy moving again and create jobs, that will be the rising tide that lifts all ships.” 

The McDonnell administration claims the budget amendments alone will bring in more than $311 million in new state tax revenues over five years and create more that 29,000 new jobs in the next two years. Bolling says the prediction is based on time-tested calculations from the Virginia Economic Development Partnership.
“In a perfect world, we shouldn’t have to incentivize anyone to come to Virginia because we know it’s such a great place to do business,” he said. “But the truth is that every other state in the nation and other countries around the world are being very aggressive in what they provide to new businesses to come to their states or their countries. And if we don’t have the same tools in place, we will lose opportunities.”

Help for Southside

Bolling said portions of the jobs and opportunity agenda are specifically targeted to help address the persistent unemployment that has plagued Southside Virginia.
“We think we still have major opportunities in Southside Virginia for advanced manufacturing, but we’ve lost opportunities because we hadn’t assembled mega-sites, three to four thousand acres where a major automotive company, for example, could go to create a plant that employs a thousand people,” he said.

In addition, Bolling cited a series of proposed incentives to boost coal, nuclear and biomass energy, measures he says would strengthen and amplify the work of academic research centers already in development in Southwest, central and Southside Virginia.  

“Economic development strategies that work in Northern Virginia, Richmond and Hampton Roads don’t work in rural parts of the state,” he said. “These incentives are very important to attracting new business and industry and jobs, specifically to rural parts of the state.”

Political dimensions

Bolling notes that Virginia’s economic development incentives have bipartisan support and take a different approach from the public works stimulus package promoted by the Obama administration. But he does not dismiss the federal spending plan as a wasteful failure.

“The truth is, I think both of these approaches are helpful,” he said.

University of Virginia political analyst Larry Sabato said chief jobs promoter is an ideal assignment for a lieutenant governor with apparent sights on Virginia’s top office.
“Bolling is McDonnell’s chosen successor as governor, and there is no more important issue to Virginians than jobs during the bad recession,” Sabato said. “As chief jobs officer, he’s probably going to be involved in a lot of jobs announcements. He’ll be at a lot of ribbon cuttings of new facilities over the next four years, and when you have a couple of dozen headlines connecting you to the public’s number one concern, it’s bound to help you.”

Bolling responded: “If we bring the unemployment rate down, if we get people back to work, if we turn the budget shortfalls into budget surpluses that will be good for everyone, there will be enough credit to go around. We’re not worried about who’s going to get credit or what the impacts will be politically. We’re just focused on doing the job and doing it well.”