I have always believed that jobs are created locally and that we should support our regional economic development groups and our regional planning commissions. They know what is working in their areas, who needs help, and how to match the needs of local business with the available resources in the state for their area.
As governor I will establish a statewide office of Innovation and Intellectual Property. Innovation and entrepreneurs have always been a part of Vermont, but we have failed to acknowledge them as true job creators.
Innovation backed by intellectual property protection raises the value of small companies tremendously, which will create good paying Vermont jobs and allow small Vermont companies to grow into large Vermont companies.
People talk about bringing good paying, high-tech jobs to Vermont. Companies are willing to supply training but they need to start with people who have a strong background in math.
We need to have local technical centers gear up immediately to work with companies to provide the basic education and skills to prepare Vermont workers. As governor, I will work to develop a truly close working relationship between our schools and our business community.
We need to address helping Vermonters keep the jobs they have. Employers train employees then find they don’t last very long. They have the basic skills, but something doesn’t work out and they quit after a short time. We need to support workers and help them solve distracting problems in their personal life.
If a worker has problems at home, or has trouble getting government assistance, it has a direct impact on their performance at work. On a lunch break, a specialist can put the employee in touch with the right agency and help them get the paperwork done. This additional assistance can turn a distracted employee into a great worker, and because the worker is valued and less distracted, it is a real benefit to the employer.
I pushed for increasing funding for the Vermont Employment Growth Incentive (VEGI), a program that was started several years ago to encourage job growth in Vermont through cash incentives to employers. This is expected to help create 800 good paying jobs in Vermont.
These are performance based incentives, so until the company has created the jobs and folks have been working for a specific time period, the incentive is not paid. They are paid out over a period of years. These new jobs create more revenues for the state, so these incentives don’t “cost” the state money, they just share some of the new revenues with the company that creates these new revenues.
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