A Daily Mail editorial from the Charleston Gazette-Mail
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The lead sentence from Gazette-Mail business reporter Max Garland said it so well Wednesday — “Speakers at the West Virginia Economic Outlook Conference sang a familiar tune Tuesday: West Virginia must diversify its economy if it wants to make the strides that the rest of the United States has in the past five years.”
Except it’s not just the last five years has the state lost its stride — how about the last 30 or 40.
That’s at least how long West Virginia leaders have been preaching to diversity the state’s economy — after significant numbers of manufacturing, chemical and steel jobs began leaving the state in the 1970s for cheaper natural resources, labor and friendlier business climes.
Then-Gov. Jay Rockefeller spoke of the need for a more diversified economy as early as 1983 — and credit him for doing his part as U.S. senator by convincing Toyota to build a manufacturing plant here in the 1990s.
Yet throughout the period, other than a few significant successes here and there, West Virginia’s economy remained largely coal-based.
And people constantly call for politicians to create jobs. The state’s Commerce Department does an admirable job at promoting business growth, but except for jobs paid for by the taxpayers whose own base is shrinking — government doesn’t create jobs — it sets the regulatory, legal and tax environment for jobs to be created and grow, or to shrivel and disappear.
The latter had been the case for too many years in West Virginia, which is why state voters called for resounding change in the 2014 elections and elected Republican majorities in both chambers of the Legislature.
The reformed Legislature did its part, to a large extent during the last two sessions, but much more work remains. Legislative leaders and the next governor need to urgently work to further improve the ability of the private sector to create jobs and grow wealth within the state through smart tax, economic, fiscal and legal policies.
The rule for any bill to be considered in 2017 should be if it doesn’t help attract or create jobs, forget it.