SNAPSHOTS: 60 Seconds…with Stephen Moret, Secretary, Louisiana Economic Development

Stephen Moret
Secretary
Louisiana Economic Development

By the Business Facilities Staff
From the July/August 2013 issue

BF: Louisiana keeps moving up in our annual Best Business Climate ranking. What are the key steps the state has taken to make it more business friendly?
SM: The most important have been our efforts to enhance Louisiana’s economic competitiveness. For example, we’ve worked to adopt comprehensive governmental ethics reforms, eliminate unconventional business taxes, create national-caliber workforce development programs (such as the number one-ranked LED FastStart program), and implement comprehensive education reforms to improve student achievement and graduation rates.

Additionally, we’ve dramatically enhanced LED’s business development approach, utilizing a highly customized project management process that delivers comprehensive, creative, fast and professional solutions for leading companies working to establish major new business operations.

BF: Louisiana’s FastStart program has topped our Workforce Training ranking for four years in a row. How does FastStart facilitate partnerships between institutions of higher education and major companies?
SM: The secret of LED FastStart’s success is customization through deep insight into what makes our client companies tick. It’s not enough to provide an off-the-shelf program, as most companies already can do that internally or working with local community and/or technical colleges. Instead, we start with a blank sheet of paper to define exactly what each company needs to succeed, including everything from desired culture and skill sets to customized employee recruitment and screening, as well as training development and delivery. And we creatively, collaboratively and relentlessly focus on the details.

For both IBM and GE Capital, we’re helping ramp up their initial professional staffing needs—a job for which FastStart is uniquely qualified. And for each company we’re pursuing long-term strategies. For GE Capital that’s more about specific software and IT curricula they’d like to see in place at New Orleans campuses; for IBM it’s more of a comprehensive talent pipeline solution across many quantitative-intense fields—such as engineering, mathematics and science—that will serve the company and its external customers well through an 800-job technology center.

Across these two projects, we are investing nearly $20 million to expand existing computer science programs to meet the future talent demand. You definitely will see more of these specialized higher education partnerships in the future in Louisiana.

BF: Louisiana recently enacted new several new incentives programs. Are these incentives succeeding in bringing businesses to the state?
SM: We are just beginning implementation and marketing of these incentives. So far, the program with the greatest market appeal is the Competitive Projects Payroll Incentive Program, which provides a payroll rebate of up to 15 percent annually for 10 years for qualifying companies. That incentive helped us secure the largest manufacturing project in state history—the $16-21 billion Sasol gas-to-liquids (GTL) and ethane-cracker complex in Southwest Louisiana.