DARLA MOORE
SPEECH TO THE SOUTHERN GROWTH POLICIES BOARD:
SOUTHERN WORKFORCE SUMMIT
June 4, 2007
St. Louis, Missouri
I am delighted to be here today at the Southern Workforce Summit. I am a strong advocate of these sorts of gatherings as a means of bringing together the right people at the right time to confront difficult issues. I am here to learn and I am here to share our recent experiences in South Carolina.
Like many of the states represented in this hall, South Carolina is facing global economic competition with an under-educated workforce, a disproportionate level of poverty, especially in our rural areas, and many of the other aspects of educational and economic disparity. This is not the position you want to be in when you are competing with emerging third-world economic powers that enjoy high-skill, low-cost production centers.
My experience with this condition began in preparing for an address I had been invited to deliver to the South Carolina Senate. I started collecting information about South Carolina’s relative economic standing and I must tell you, I was astounded. My research quickly catalogued shocking indicators of our low rankings on such basic measurements as per capita income, GSP, and wage earnings. All this while at the same time reading in the newspapers about how great South Carolina was doing because of the number of new jobs created and the amount of capital expansion generated by the recruitment of foreign investment.
This information told me that the State was at a crossroad and its future in the new global economy was hanging in the balance.
Faced with this reality, I began an effort to pull together a number of business, community, and opinion leaders from around the State in 2002, and we ultimately formed an entity we named the Palmetto Institute. The Institute is an independent, non-profit, non-partisan research foundation and it has only one mission – to increase the wealth of all South Carolinians. It operates from a platform built on independent, thoughtful, scholarly research that is used to persuade policymakers of the steps necessary to give the people of South Carolina the foundation for a better life.
We operate under two basic tenets: One, while we constantly monitor a number of economic and innovation metrics, we use per capita income as our basic measure of improvement. We chose this metric because positive results depend on an improved condition for the entire population. Second, while our Board is an outstanding group of business and community leaders with very strong opinions, we do not take a position on a public policy until we have completed independent, thoughtful, and comprehensive research on a subject.
To establish an initial baseline for our work, the first project undertaken by the Institute was a comparative economic analysis of South Carolina in the global economy. While the results of the study were not surprising, they were blunt and to the point in the assessment of the competitiveness of our State. In a nutshell, the report concluded that South Carolina could not compete vigorously in the global, knowledge-based economy with its existing mix of industries and the quality of its economic foundations.
We quickly noticed that nobody was talking about how poorly our basic economic foundations were doing compared to the nation and our neighboring states. It was almost like a “state of denial.” Today, I am happy to report that the tenor and content of the conversation have changed. At every level, both in the private and public sectors, people are talking about finding ways to be competitive, to raise our per capita income, and to be productive and innovative in our approach to developing and sustaining economic opportunities. I am very proud to say the Palmetto Institute has played a critical and significant role in changing the way we look at our metrics and in shaping the conversation about how we can improve the quality of life for every South Carolinian.
Standing on the shoulders of this initial work, the Institute led an effort to retain Professor Michael Porter of Harvard, a leading expert on competitiveness, to develop a long-term economic development strategy for South Carolina. The strategy focused on building our own assets through the development of industry clusters.
As a means of implementing Professor Porter’s long-term strategy, the South Carolina Council on Competitiveness (now referred to as “New Carolina”) was created. New Carolina is a broad-based commission composed of business and community leaders, with the mission of building clusters in South Carolina and improving the quality of economic foundations, especially workforce quality.
For the next few moments, I would like to be a bit more specific about what the Institute has done and plans to do in our efforts to improve our State’s competitive standing and economic well-being. Then, I would like to close by making a couple of personal observations relating to the 2007 Report on the Future of the South.
The Institute gave its strong support to the passage of the State Education and Economic Development Act, an initiative to provide all public school students with a more focused curriculum and the flexibility to choose coursework and job training opportunities aligned with their individual aspirations and abilities. Our research convinced us that structuring a more goal-oriented, student-relevant curriculum would enable students to explore and better prepare for career opportunities. Despite the need for such a program, EEDA was not an easy sell. It took perseverance, relationship-building, strong collaborations and partnerships, and a commitment to fulfilling an opportunity to give students a reason to be actively engaged in school and in their future.
Now, the Education Taskforce of New Carolina is visibly promoting full funding for EEDA and has taken an active role in its full implementation. In addition, the Taskforce has begun a program to work with communities to increase parental involvement in education.
In addition to supporting EEDA, the Institute prepared and disseminated substantial research that champions increased funding to expand pre-K education in South Carolina.
We have also completed a study on the effectiveness of the Workforce Investment Act, or “WIA,” program in South Carolina. The study included background research, comparative analyses of other states, interviews with every local WIA director and others, and a review of best practices. As a result of the study and our recommendations, the State Workforce Investment Board and the Department of Commerce allocated $1.5 million to develop a statewide workforce readiness credential through the use of WorkKeys®. They also are in the process of developing a user-friendly, web-based tool to assess and align education and workforce indicators with local, regional, and state economic trends. Timely, relevant, and accessible labor market information is essential in economic development and workforce efforts.
I’m also delighted to report that our workforce study was followed by a project between the South Carolina Technical College System, New Carolina, and the Southern Growth Policies Board, tying workforce development to economic clusters.
We have often preached that you cannot talk about workforce and economic development without also talking about education – those three pillars are interdependent and reflect the relative strength of each other. In conjunction with the Technical College System and Lumina Foundation for Education, along with its managing partner, MDC out of North Carolina, we are getting ready to launch a signature Lumina initiative, “Achieving the Dream.” This program is aimed at improving community college outcomes through proven, data-driven policies for those students facing traditional barriers to success.
We are also now getting ready to launch a major initiative to facilitate a comprehensive assessment of the agribusiness cluster in South Carolina, to include mapping the entire state for existing and potential agricultural and bio-energy resources. As a part of this study, the Institute will pay close attention to opportunities to develop renewable fuels in South Carolina. We will also undertake to develop an overall energy plan to recommend to the State leadership.
You may be interested in how the agribusiness and bio-fuels study came about, because it is a prime example of how we work. Our initial research led us to believe that demand for agricultural products, just like oil, would rise as the world population continues to grow, and as more countries like China and India embrace capitalism and begin to take a more prominent role on the economic stage. So, we organized a summit – much like your own – of a select group of farmers, business owners, and community and political leaders, and brought in world-class speakers like Lester Brown. Since the summit, we have created an advisory committee and pursued opportunities such as the mapping project I spoke of. South Carolina has an exciting opportunity, through the use of public/private partnerships, to develop new economic strategies for our State.
I have shared with you only a few issues we have tackled since we formed in 2002. Although we’ve accomplished much, there is still much, much more to be done.
In summary, what the Institute has done is to identify and confirm that South Carolina has the raw material to be successful in the new global economy, even though we have not developed and employed all of our assets to their highest and best use. My fellow Board members and I want the Palmetto Institute to serve as a guide for our State – as it travels the path to a vastly-improved quality of life for all South Carolinians. To do this, we have operated from a platform built on independent, thoughtful, scholarly research, which we and others use to shape state policies critical to providing all people the foundation for a better life. This is our mission – simple in concept but quite daunting in its execution. This is the challenge that all of you face. It is only with perseverance and steadfastness in your mission that you can achieve your goals.
I applaud your efforts in bringing groups together to search for ways to create new opportunities in the knowledge economy. The “Convene-Connect-Commit” process to build a knowledgeable, entrepreneurial, innovative workforce is to be commended. I would remind you though that many successes stem from “enlightened self-interest.” Adam Smith, the father of conventional economic theory, has written that, “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.” Our workforce study showed that most workforce programs had adequate funding and the qualified people to train, but no job opportunities existed. For the person looking for employment, the job at the end is the motivator. We’ve been doing the “public good” for the last thirty years, yet we are still failing in some basic economic foundations. We’ve learned that we can no longer be “business as usual,” but instead must create and manage the right relationships and put in place a practical framework that will build upon our own assets. The hallmark of success will be collaboration and an innovative and enterprising culture that fosters a robust economy.
We’ve also learned that any undertaking to improve our readiness in the global economy requires vision, a clear point of leadership, and direction: Creating a vision that binds us together for progress toward a common goal and which gives us hope and opportunity for our future. George Washington Carver once said that “where there is no vision, there is no hope.” All of us understand that the challenges we collectively face are much too great for a single entity, public or private, to meet and overcome. Building partnerships within our communities and even across state lines is critical. Articulating and implementing a common vision is essential. We also have to demand more of our leaders and of ourselves. If our leaders are not willing to support our efforts, we need to get new leaders. This is our challenge – it is our calling.
Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to speak with you today, and I applaud you for the commitment you are undertaking to make the South a better play to live, work, and play.