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THE OFFICIAL WEB SITE OF THE MADISON TIMES WEEKLY NEWSPAPER |
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TOP STORIES |
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Governor Doyle meets Wisconsin’s Black Press: Jobs and Business by Jonathan Gramling Part 3of 3
On December 19, Governor James E. Doyle met with Wisconsin's Black press at the governor's office in Milwaukee to look back at the accomplishments of his administration. In the first two parts of this three part series, Doyle talked about educational issues, his political appointments, the state budget deficit, affordable health care, and efforts to reduce Wisconsin's prison population. In this final installment, he addresses Employment and business issues. On the changing Wisconsin economy - Since he introduced Grow Wisconsin, his economic development plan, Doyle has emphasized that the state needs to attract new, high-paying jobs to the state because the state's labor market is changing and state government is shrinking. "Frankly, state government isn't going to be hiring much in the next few years. That's just a fact of life. A lot of our focus has been on the private sector. High-tech is going to determine a lot of the future here for African American people. I believe we have to reach out through our technical college system making sure they are really focused on getting African Americans and others into those technical training programs that are focused on bio-tech, information tech, and so on. That's very true in Milwaukee and increasingly in Madison. When you talk about production, it isn't about heavy-duty manufacturing. It's going to be highly skilled technicians in laboratories. We can do that, but we have to reach into the high schools and technical colleges and show that career path is open. We really have to work to get African Americans into those career paths that are almost certain of employment. Medical technicians are almost automatically hired when they come out of the technical college; the need is so great." On employment created by the Marquette Interchange reconstruction project - Over the next four years, the state will be spending approximately $650 million on rebuilding I-94's Marquette Interchange in downtown Milwaukee in four stages. The Wisconsin Department of Transportation is working with prime contractors and others to maximize the opportunities for minority-owned businesses and workers of color. "I'm not going to get into what the percentage should be, but people should be able to look and see how many contractors got jobs for how many dollars and how much of that went to minority firms. How many people actually worked there in jobs and what was the percentage? We're very, very focused on that. Transportation Secretary Frank Busalacchi was the head of the Stadium Board. Most people in this area would say the stadium was one of the big successes as far as minority hiring, contracting, and people on the job. We're working with some of the Milwaukee trade unions that have done some incredible work to make sure that not only on the Marquette project, but also on the power plant construction [in Port Washington] that they are moving people into the trades. Look at the dollar figures. Look at the number of companies." On utilizing the expanded capacities of minority-owned businesses - Some minority-owned businesses expanded their capacity to work on several large construction projects in Milwaukee. However, they were not able to continue the level of construction work they had been performing and ran into serious financial trouble. "There's going to be a succession of big projects. That's one of the reasons it is important to make sure we have minority contractors and workers involved in the Port Washington power plant. That's ready to go. After that, we're going to have two in Oak Creek. That's probably 15 years of construction work that's ahead of us in this area right now. The same is true of Marquette. There's this huge Southeast Wisconsin - there's debate about how big it is going to be and what the full expansion is and what all of the needs are in the Southeast Wisconsin freeway corridor - but there is no doubt, there's going to be a lot of roadwork that is going to continue to be done. I hope we see people who are involved in the Marquette Interchange move on into the Southeast freeway project. I hope to see people involved in Port Washington move on to Oak Creek. We really do have a good 10-15 years of major construction that's going to be going on in this community. We want people to move from one to another and build up value and capital and wealth."
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