In the first six months of the year, Governor Gina Raimondo left town more than a dozen times. Here’s a look at what the governor has been up to.
Governor Raimondo calls talking with corporate executives in other states an important part of trying to spark job growth in Rhode Island.
“It takes a lot of shoe leather,” she said. “It’s a lot of shoe leather. You’ve got to be out knocking on doors, pounding away …. It’s a chance to tell our story and build some excitement and some momentum.”
The governor’s office said Raimondo has made five trips so far this year to meet with out of state businesses. She’s traveled to places like New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and California. On the whole, the governor has spent part of at least 29 days out of state through the first six months of the year. When it comes to economic development, Raimondo said it’s important to be in the hunt.
“You know, at about any given time, we have probably a dozen companies that we’re in discussion with,” she said. “It might happen now, it might happen a year from now, it might happen two years from now. But if you have a consistent presence and you’re constantly out there, Rhode Island is going to get its fair share of opportunity.”
Some of the opportunities are panning out. California-based energy system maker SolarCity has unveiled plans to add jobs in Rhode Island. And when PayPal scrapped a planned expansion in North Carolina due to a law halting anti-discrimination protection for gays and lesbians, the governor pounced.
“They were going to put an operations centers in North Carolina,” Raimondo said. “And they decided not to do that, which I read about it in the paper, so I then called them.”
PayPal has yet to announce whether they’ll take the governor up on her offer.
But a handful of other companies have decided either to move to Rhode Island or stay in the state since Raimondo became governor. General Electric made the biggest splash with plans to bring at least 100 good-paying jobs to Providence. During a news conference to welcome the company, GE CFO Jeffrey Bornstein cited Raimondo as a persistent force who called him 75 times.
Still, Rhode Island’s economy is not exactly thriving as Raimondo approaches the mid-point in her four-year term.
Sure, the unemployment rate dropped by more than 2 points, to just over 6 percent, since she took office. And the 8,000 jobs created in the state last year were the most in any year since 2000. But Rhode Island lost almost half that many between April and May.
“During the financial crisis, the Great Recession, Rhode Island really, really did badly,” said URI economics professor Leonard Lardaro, “and we became known much more our unemployment rate than anything else.”
Lardaro applauds Raimondo’s efforts to pitch Rhode Island to out of state executives. But he said the state still has to overcome hurdles like a tough climate for business and a perception problem.
“Rhode Island’s still about in the first, maybe second inning of reinventing ourselves, something that should have been done all the way back to 2008,” he said.
When Raimondo took office early last year, she pointed to troubling indicators like an aging population and a low-skilled workforce, as problems confronting the state’s economic outlook. But that’s not what she emphasizes when she meets with out of state executives: “What I tell them is, we have the lowest corporate tax rate in New England, we have a good fiscal outlook, we have amazing universities, we have high quality of life, come check it out.”
Raimondo said the business people she talks with don’t take a dim view of Rhode Island, despite periodic outbursts of corruption and other nagging problems.
Courting business is not the only reason she leaves the state. Raimondo is an aggressive fundraiser, with more than $1 million in her war chest. The governor says her occasional fundraisers on out of state trips are a standard part of politics.
“It’s the nature of what we do,” she said. “It’s what every governor does, it what’s every senator does, and you know, it’s just part of what we need to do.”
The governor’s office says taxpayers pay only for the governor’s official work on behalf of the state.
And talking with out of state corporate executives is just one part of Raimondo’s approach to building the economy. The General Assembly has approved tens of millions of dollars in incentives meant to help spark new jobs. Critics call that corporate welfare. Raimondo said other states use the same type of incentives, and that Rhode Island has to compete on a level footing.
Back in 2014, Raimondo campaigned on a theme of reinvigorating Rhode Island’s economy. Her ability to deliver on that promise will likely be a a major issue two years from now, during the state’s next campaign for governor.
