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| Brand Oregon funding dries up |
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Shelly Strom
Business Journal staff writer
One year after being introduced with much fanfare, an effort initiated by Gov. Ted Kulongoski to brand Oregon is without funding. Although the effort, dubbed Brand Oregon, is not included in the budget Kulongoski released earlier this month, officials say they expect to find piecemeal funding to continue the effort.
"It is kind of up in the air as to what direction Brand Oregon is going to go," said Brand Oregon Director Debby Kennedy.
Brand Oregon -- a campaign to create a brand for the state and the business that happens here -- is one of 12 key economic revitalization objectives in a plan unveiled by the governor at the end of 2003. With its launch, Kulongoski made available $250,000 -- an amount that Kennedy said is relatively small for an effort with such broad ambitions. But partnerships and in-kind donations expanded that amount at least tenfold, officials said.
The money was spent on advertising campaigns to promote Oregon as a location for businesses looking to locate, as well as food products produced here. Kennedy spent much of the year traveling the state, speaking to agricultural commodity commissions, trade groups, economic development organizations and other audiences.
"When you go around the state, you see how partnerships to promote and brand Oregon can come about that you probably wouldn't think about if you weren't out there," she said.
But the campaigns initiated by Brand Oregon and Kennedy's outreach efforts are uncertain.
She served in 2004 with Brand Oregon on loan as public affairs director from the Port of Portland but stepped down from that post to continue with Brand Oregon. Her salary from the port will cease at the end of this month. She expects to function as a volunteer for Brand Oregon until funding can be secured.
The lack of funding shouldn't be read as a lack of support, said MardiLyn Saathoff, business policy and economic development adviser to Kulongoski. "Regardless of whether there is an actual line item in his budget, the governor is very supportive of Brand Oregon," said Saathoff. "The state's revenue streams are not coming back as fast as everyone had hoped. What that means from the funding side of [Brand Oregon ], the governor had to make some tough choices."
Instead of allocating money from the state's general fund, plans call for paring funding from state agencies such as the Oregon Economic and Community Development Department and the Oregon Department of Agriculture -- both agencies that were central in campaigns launched under the umbrella of Brand Oregon.
Kennedy helped execute recruitment campaigns undertaken by the Oregon Economic and Community Development Department in 2004. For instance, a series of Brand Oregon advertisements are scheduled to appear in February in multiple California business-oriented publications. Two other high-profile Brand Oregon campaigns centered around Oregon-caught seafood and Oregon-produced wines, cheeses and pears. Saathoff said officials within economic development-oriented agencies will look at their budgets for money that they can contribute to the branding effort.
"Then we'll go to state commissions and private partners and say, 'We have a Brand Oregon campaign that will directly benefit your products and your industry and we want to know if you'll kick in,'" she said.
Kennedy said that feedback indicates efforts undertaken in 2004 helped boost the state's economy. Grocery stores that participated in the seafood campaign reported increased sales of Oregon seafood, with several stores reporting 76 percent gains, she said. In addition, preliminary data provided by wineries participating in the Oregon Bounty wine-based campaign indicate traffic through wineries climbed as much as 40 percent.
"We're not saying that Brand Oregon gets 100 percent of the credit for that, but we know that a portion of that is a result of our efforts," Kennedy said.
One observer said it's too soon to judge the effort. "I have to ask whether after one year can we really or should we evaluate it," said LeAnn Locher, senior design director for Portland-based marketing and communications agency Metropolitan Group. "Branding is something that needs to happen and be supported over a long period of time.
"But I happen to love it. I think it related to a lot of people who were coming to Oregon to live. It captured the essence of a lot of hopes and dreams that you can indeed do something different here," she said. "That really helps to install pride within our own messengers and it has given me some fantastic language to use myself," she said.
Contact Shelly Strom at sstrom@bizjournals.com
© 2004 American City Business Journals Inc.
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| '05 Hiring, Firing Expected to Be Equal |
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Statesman Journal, by Don Currie, December 20, 2004
The halting nature of the economic recovery in the Salem area is likely to continue in the first quarter of 2005. The quarterly employer survey by Manpower Inc. shows that an equal percentage of companies is planning to hire and fire workers. Thirteen percent of companies said that they plan to hire more workers, and 13 percent said that they plan to reduce the size of their staffs. That's a little more pessimistic than a year ago, when the same 13 percent expressed plans to hire, but only 10 percent said that they were going to shrink.
Salem's expectations are better than Portland, where 10 percent said that they would hire, but 20 percent were planning layoffs. In the Eugene/Springfield area, 37 percent said that they will be adding employees while only 7 percent said that they were cutting.
Best areas to be looking for work are in construction, durable goods manufacturing, transportation/public utilities and education.
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| Oregon Has Great Potential for Business Development |
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KGW.Com, Associated Press, December 21
EUGENE, Ore. -- A new report says Oregon is a great place to do business, even if its consistently high unemployment rates say otherwise.
Oregon ranks among the top seven states in three broad economic development indicators, according to the Corporation for Enterprise Development, based in Washington, D.C.
The study measured 68 criteria in three categories: performance, business vitality and development capacity. Oregon received B grades in performance and business vitality and an A grade in development capacity. Connecticut was the only straight-A state.
Oregon's economic development picture presents a strong mix of resource efficiency and quality of life, the report found. Development capacity is Oregon's clear strength, meaning that "the state is laying the foundation for a strong economy," the report said.
Under that category, it received an A grade for its "infrastructure resources," which measures the conditions of highways, bridges, mass transit and sewage systems; and B grades in both "amenity resources" and "natural capital," which measure quality of life and the sustainability of natural resources by looking at energy costs, urban housing cost, cropland conversion and air quality.
Also listed as Oregon strengths were: investment in manufacturing, highway performance, number of patents issued, widespread recycling, and use of renewable energy. Economic growth was predicted by Oregon's improved rankings in industrial diversity and initial public stock offerings, plus improvements on multiple measures of innovation
The report shows the state is on the right track to recovery, said Marty Brantley, who directs the Oregon Economic and Community Development Department.
But the report is just one indicator of economic health, he added. "Added together, these ratings suggest we are building a solid economic environment that is favorable for entrepreneurs, small business and big industry alike," Brantley said.
Another recent survey also rated Oregon as pro-business.
A group known as the Tax Foundation ranked Oregon 10th in the nation in terms of the low tax burden it imposes on businesses. Oregon earned its high ranking largely because it lacks a sales tax.
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| Leaders Will Update Economy RX |
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Oregon's business, government and academic leaders will convene Monday to update the business community's policy prescriptions to cure the state's economic ills.
Leadership Summit 2004 will revisit the Oregon Business Plan, an economic manifesto directed by the business community at the Legislature and congressional delegation. The plan is partly a short-term wish list and partly a long-term vision to improve the state's business climate and revitalize its economy.
After collecting feedback from employers around the state this summer, the plan's writers are proposing updates that emphasize business innovation, educational improvements and -- for the first time -- health care cost containment. Endorsed by 22 of the state's largest business associations, the plan's overarching goal is to cultivate Oregon's export industries, such as high technology, agriculture and timber, because they offer the best chance for growth in family-wage employment.
Organizers expect about 1,000 people to attend the all-day event at the Oregon Convention Center. It will be co-hosted by a steering committee of business chiefs and a cast of public leaders that includes Gov. Ted Kulongoski and U.S. Sens. Ron Wyden and Gordon Smith.
Although there are generally few surprises at the highly-scripted forum, it has become an important nonpartisan venue for the business community and elected leaders to discuss economic priorities for the coming year. Last year, the governor delivered a fairly direct message of his own, telling business leaders that he saw little chance of accomplishing one of their major priorities: revamping the state's public finance system.
"We can't solve economic issues by rearranging the tax code," Kulongoski said in his lunchtime keynote speech.
Nevertheless, progress has been made on other fronts, said Duncan Wyse, president of the Oregon Business Council, a nonpartisan group of corporate CEOs that organizes the event and provides staff to draft the business plan.
"In a two-year time frame, a lot has been done to strengthen our economic foundation," Wyse said.
Elected leaders have been able to achieve some of the easier goals in the original plan, including reforming the public employee retirement system, restructuring the state's economic development efforts, passing a transportation bill, improving international air access, expanding development-ready industrial land and launching a new state branding campaign.
What remains are some of the more intractable, big-picture issues, such as stabilizing education funding while maintaining budget discipline. The business plan steering committee took a bus tour across the state this summer to gather input from business leaders. With that feedback, they revamped the plan around three broad objectives, Wyse said.
The first is to expand the state's capacity for economic innovation by creating research centers at state universities, focusing economic development efforts on industries in which Oregon is strong, and increasing access to venture capital and entrepreneurial training.
The second is to improve the state's preschool-through-higher-education system so that it better prepares Oregonians to land high-paying jobs. The final objective is to improve the state's health care delivery system and try to contain runaway costs.
It's an ambitious agenda, and one that contains few definitive solutions. "But we have some ideas on how to get started," Wyse said. In the short term, Wyse said, the opportunities to stimulate the state economy are limited. "Where we can make a huge difference is in the long-term economic health of the state, in setting the conditions for success," he said.
Ted Sickinger: 503-221-8505; tedsickinger@news.oregonian.com
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| The President's High Growth Job Training Initiative |
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President
George W. Bush |
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"All the worker wants is to be helped, to be given the skills necessary to realize his or her dreams. The High Growth Job Training Initiative in this administration is aiming to do just that. It's a collaborative effort with community colleges to help team up people with the jobs that are needed, to make sure that the changes in our economy don't leave people behind."
~Labor Day 2003
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The President's High Growth Job Training Initiative, as implemented by the U.S. Department of Labor's Employment and Training Administration, is designed to provide national leadership for a demand-driven workforce system that ensures no worker is left behind.
The foundation of this initiative is partnerships that include the public workforce system, business and industry, education and training providers, and economic development working collaboratively to develop solutions to the workforce challenges facing these industries and to develop maximum access for American workers to gain the competencies they need to get good jobs in these industries.
- Industry representatives define the workforce challenges, e.g., getting career and skill information to young people charting their education and career courses; accessing new labor pools; defining core competencies for success on the job; training workers; building the capacity of educational institutions to train workers.
- Community colleges and other education and training providers assist in developing competency models and curricula to build core competencies, and train workers.
- The public workforce system accesses human capital (youth, unemployed and dislocated workers) and places trained workers in jobs.
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| Oregon Taxes Considered Business Friendly |
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KGW.Com, November 29, 2004
Oregon ranks 10th in the nation in terms of the low tax burden it imposes on businesses.
The State Business Tax Climate Index is used by the Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization, to measure the "tax-friendliness" to business of each state´s tax system at the beginning of 2004.
South Dakota leads the ten states that had the most business-friendly taxes in 2004, followed by Florida, Alaska, Texas, New Hampshire, Nevada, Wyoming, Colorado, Washington and Oregon. Hawaii´s tax system was considered the least hospitable to business. It was followed by New York, Minnesota, West Virginia, Rhode Island, Vermont, Kentucky, Arkansas, Maine and Wisconsin.
"Nearly all of the best states raise sufficient revenue without imposing at least one of the three major state taxes — sales taxes, personal income taxes and corporate income taxes," said Scott Hodge, president of the Tax Foundation and co-author of the study.
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