A Plan for Pennsylvania: New Jobs and a New Economy

By Joseph M. Hoeffel

We need a comprehensive strategy to create jobs, build a strong workforce, help small businesses, and bring together our farms, suburbs, and cities as we move Pennsylvania's economy forward.

The number one issue facing the commonwealth today is jobs. Unemployment in Pennsylvania has doubled from 4.2% in November 2007 to 8.4% in November 2009, higher than it's been in over twenty years. The numbers aren't negative across the board: some economic sectors are showing improvement in our commonwealth, such as mining & logging; education & health; information & technology; and trade, transportation, & utilities. But the improvements aren't huge, and many Pennsylvanians are having a hard time filling these jobs.

Our workforce ranks poorly compared with other states in the number of workers with a college degree, and the economic sectors with the most growth -- and the most potential for continued growth -- increasingly require advanced education and skills. The vast majority of businesses in our commonwealth are small businesses, facing greater difficulties with fewer resources. And neighboring regions coping with different issues are sometimes unaware of how they can work together and help each other out.

We need a comprehensive strategy to create jobs, build a strong workforce, help small businesses, and bring together our farms, suburbs, and cities as we move Pennsylvania's economy forward.

THE ECONOMY HAS CHANGED, AND SO MUST WE

Many see our situation as a problem to solve, but we also have an opportunity. Through bolstered education and job training programs, we can build a strong workforce. Through sound investment in the business sectors which have demonstrated that they will be the backbone of our 21st century economy, we can create high-paying jobs for Pennsylvania's workers. These are the two things we need most in order to not only recover from our current recession, but maintain a robust economy in the future.

We must increase access to community college programs designed to educate and re-train workers in the skills the 21st century demands for Pennsylvanians of all ages. Those who stand to benefit the most from this are those most likely to be out of work. Increased funding and tuition assistance programs are a must to bring this opportunity within their reach.

At the same time, we must do more to give every student the opportunity to continue their education through college, so they can join the workforce already educated and prepared to meet its challenges. We must establish a scholarship program for our state system of higher education, for which every high school graduate with a B- or better average is eligible.

But our efforts have to start earlier than college. We need to do more to help every child reach high school graduation and be prepared for higher education. The focus must begin with early childhood education programs, which have extremely strong positive effects on college graduation. In K-12 classrooms we must teach our students 21st century skills such as computer programming and environmental studies.

We must develop strong drop-out outreach and re-engagement programs, demonstrated to both improve lives and pay for themselves many times over. And we must help our teacher corps become stronger educators by supporting residency training programs. Education is the key to building the workforces of today and tomorrow.

Investing in the industries of Pennsylvania's future is critical to their growth and success here. We must adopt an "Invest Green In Green" strategy: invest our green dollars in the green economy. Support for green energy will create jobs in manufacturing, construction, and engineering. Much of that investment will come from the commonwealth. But we must also attract investments from out-of-state and overseas partners in alternative energy industries like wind and solar, a task where Joe Hoeffel already has a track record of success as Pennsylvania's Deputy Secretary for the Office of International Business Development.

We shouldn't limit our focus to green energy jobs: a diverse economy is a strong economy. We will bring labor unions and business leaders together as create jobs across our economy. Support for our hospitals and nursing homes will create jobs in healthcare; investment in infrastructure projects will create jobs in transportation and construction; increased funding for libraries and schools will create jobs in information and education.

And while the booming natural gas industry in Pennsylvania's Marcellus Shale requires much stronger environmental policies and oversight than we currently have, the job creation potential of responsibly managed, safely mined natural resources is tremendous.

We also need to enact policies which make Pennsylvania businesses more competitive, including a $100 million tax cut for manufacturers who "insource" jobs to Pennsylvanians instead of outsourcing them from our commonwealth. And we need to enact a "Jobs Now" initiative to fast-track infrastructure repair projects and pollution clean-up projects, putting Pennsylvanians to work right away.

SMALL BUSINESSES ARE A BIG PART OF OUR ECONOMY

When looking at businesses in Pennsylvania, we must keep a sense of scale. Only 2% have 100 or more employees. The other 98% of Pennsylvania businesses are small businesses: 36% have 2-99 employees, and 62% are sole-proprietor operations. In a down economy, these are the businesses which are hardest hit. They have fewer resources and less money in the bank to help weather the storm, and less access to the financial capital required to right the ship when the seas calm. Meanwhile, the cost of providing healthcare has skyrocketed for small business owners. And in today's economic climate where loans are difficult to come by, entrepreneurs young and old find it harder to start new businesses.

Small businesses are the heart of our economy, and keeping them healthy is a top priority. We must push for healthcare reform that relieves small businesses of the spiraling costs. We must promote long-term capital loans and micro-loans to small businesses from the commonwealth, but we also must press Congress to restore and increase federal stimulus funding to the Small Business Administration.

To better prepare the next generation of small business leaders, we must explore incentives for small businesses participating in university co-op and internship programs. And by encouraging partnerships between universities and small businesses, we can forge new technologies and create small business jobs we can't even envision today. With our help, the entrepreneurs of today can become the innovators of tomorrow.

WEAVE TOGETHER OUR RURAL, SUBURBAN, AND URBAN ECONOMIES

Pennsylvania's economy has three major components: our cities, our suburbs, and our farms. To build a stronger commonwealth, we must not only strengthen each of these but also strengthen the connections between them.

If small businesses are the heart of Pennsylvania's economy, then farms are our economy's soul: agriculture remains the number one industry in Pennsylvania. But small farms suffer from suburban sprawl, highway construction, and unregulated natural resource mining. To protect our farmland, we must have strong open space preservation programs, like the one Joe Hoeffel enacted in Montgomery County. The Growing Greener programs have succeeded across the state and must be renewed. To help our small farms in the marketplace, we must provide incentives for local, sustainable, and organic farms -- which in turn will provide Pennsylvanians healthier diets.

We need to bridge the widening technological divide between our farms and cities. As modern farming requires increasingly specialized knowledge, children of farming families need greater access to educational programs than ever before. We also must expand broadband internet throughout the commonwealth to allow all Pennsylvanians, urban and rural, access to the online world.

Infrastructure projects can strengthen the connections between cities and suburbs and help both as they help each other. By investing in mass transit, we create jobs in construction, maintenance, and transportation operations. But we also facilitate and support jobs throughout our cities and their surroundings through improved commuting; we improve quality of life for families; and we help the environment through reduced energy consumption and air pollution.

By investing in our roads, we not only increase highway capacity, but also encourage responsible development which will preserve both urban neighborhoods and suburban communities. And we both create jobs and improve safety through projects to repair aging road and rail bridges throughout the state.

Investments to revitalize and rehabilitate older communities and downtowns will bring Pennsylvania's cities economic growth they haven't seen in many years, in turn bringing renewed safety, prosperity, and pride.

As Montgomery County Commissioner, Joe Hoeffel launched a bold county economic development plan to spur major urban redevelopment projects, attract and retain businesses, and rejuvenate older commercial complexes. Revitalizing our urban centers can provide the economic "pull" to complement the "push" of the open space preservation programs. Coupled with transit-oriented design guiding our development, we can help our cities, suburbs, and rural areas work together as never before.

For all of these projects, we need to find out what works locally. Each community is unique, and we can't force a single state strategy to work everywhere. Many local organizations excel at providing education, job training, housing, child-care, and small business assistance. Wherever possible, we should provide state support to successful community-based organizations.

LEADING PENNSYLVANIA, LEADING AMERICA

Build an educated and flexible workforce able to take on the challenges of the 21st century. Encourage entrepreneurship and innovation through strong support of Pennsylvania's small businesses. Weave our rural, suburban, and urban communities together so that each strengthens the others. Pennsylvanians will work together to build a strong economy, providing an example other states will try to follow.

Joe Hoeffel's Plan for Pennsylvania will create the jobs we need today while investing in our workers, businesses and new technologies to grow our economy for years to come.