Two leaders in Louisiana’s economic development told the Public Affairs Research Council of Louisiana (PAR) this week that the problems that have plagued the state’s job growth numbers are fixable.

Will Green, president and CEO of the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry (LABI), and Adam Knapp, CEP of the Committee of 100 for Economic Development (C100), expressed their organizations’ economic priorities.

In the coming months, Louisiana will have a special session centered around public safety and crime and the regular 2024 legislative session. With a fresh administration, lawmakers are buzzing with anticipation and excitement, Green said.

LABI saw the opportunity for change coming and released LA23, a research-based initiative with “really broad-based policy solutions” spearheaded by LABI to make Louisiana an “economic giant” in the South by 2030.

Green said the initiative is broken down into four main categories: workforce, education, crime and improving the state’s tax climate. These focuses are aligned with the three main “policy buckets” being prioritized in Louisiana being insurance, education and crime.

C100 is “taking the lead” in assessing the role and structure of the Louisiana Economic Department (LED) during the upcoming regular session, Knapp said.

“There’s a lot of talk about how we think about the future of that specific agency, how it coordinates across all other agencies, how it sets a long-range strategy for the state’s economy, and then how it performs competitively to some of the states that have the best-performing economic development agencies.”

They are also going to be prioritizing workforce solutions and property, casualty and auto insurance prices in Louisiana.

Workforce and jobs

Louisiana is the only state in the South that lost non-farm jobs over the past eight years, Knapp said. The average growth for other southern states is nine percent; this kind of growth in Louisiana would have equated to 200,000 more jobs. Currently, the state is down by about 10,000 jobs since 2016.

He said job growth is a “core concern” among lawmakers. What could drive this growth, he said, is more efficient performance from LED. A goal is to reorganize the LED to ensure consistent practices from administration to administration and solid long-range planning.

Green said the walls between the state, industry and educational facilities need to be broken down so that organizations can “stop working in silos.” In LA23, there is a concept of an “educational czar” within the LED that would oversee communications between these sectors.

He also said the LABI is taking an “all-hands-on-deck approach” to increase the trained workforce pool through regulatory and legislative changes, and programs for high schoolers, college students, veterans and former offenders.

Population loss is a major hurdle for workforce development in the state. This is something that can be addressed through intersectional improvements in various sectors that are driving people away: sales tax rates, homeowners and auto insurance rates, violent crime, low education ratings and the state ranking “consistently on the judicial hellhole ranking,” Green said.

“The good news is that we can fix every one of those things legislatively.”

He is optimistic due to Gov. Jeff Landry’s vocal commitment to addressing all of these issues and Louisiana’s abundant resources.

“The things you can’t change about Louisiana that are God-given is that we’ve got some of the best ports in the country, we’ve got the Mississippi River, we’ve got some of the best talent in the oil and gas industry … and we’ve got, again, some of the best people.”

ITEP

Though Landry has yet to make changes to the Industrial Tax Exemption Program — a state program that grants property tax exemptions to facilities — lawmakers are holding their breath for potential upcoming changes.

Former Gov. John Bel Edwards put restrictions on ITEP in 2016 that reduced the tax break from 100 percent to 80 percent and gave local governing bodies a stake in the approval or denial of ITEPs.

Green believes the ITEP as Edwards left it is crippling potential industrial investments, citing the restrictions as “political hoops” for interested companies to jump through.

“They need certainty, they need predictability, and right now, unfortunately, the ITEP is anything but. These are large companies that can’t turn on a dime based on the political whims of certain local areas.”

He sees a need to limit the boundaries that were previously set and the institution of a “streamlined, predictable process” for investors.

Knapp reaffirmed the ITEP approval process at the local level is “complicated and confusing for a lot of the locals on that process,” and said the most successful parishes have a “streamlined, local approval step” in which one local governing body coordinates all participants and approves or denies the ITEP in one step.

The execution of “radical” value reduction of the ITEP incentive in 2016 was and is “rocky” due to the procedural steps, he said.

According to Knapp, in a report released by the Economic Development Transition Committee and Fiscal Transition Committee, an interest in retaining the 80/20 ITEP incentive has been expressed. The common practice of approving an ITEP application before a project breaks ground is expected to continue, as well.

Changes made to the ITEP process do not need legislative approval, and can be done through executive orders.