Traverse City Record-Eagle

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    Doug Rothwell
March 19, 2010

CEO: State can learn from Traverse area

BY ART BUKOWSKI

TRAVERSE CITY -- Those striving for a leaner, meaner, more cooperative Michigan could learn some things from the Grand Traverse region.

So said Doug Rothwell, former president of the Michigan Economic Development Corp., and current president and CEO of Business Leaders for Michigan. Rothwell was the keynote speaker Thursday at the Traverse Bay Economic Development Corp.'s annual meeting.

Rothwell praised the region's record of collaboration after presenting an extensive five-point "turnaround plan" for Michigan to about 250 people gathered at the Hagerty Center.

"You guys perform better than a lot of other places" across the state, he said.

Rothwell believes the state's history of squabbling, inefficiency and divisive politics has hampered economic growth.

"We don't act cohesively in the state; we are divided by regions -- north, south, east, west, black, white, Republican, Democrat," he said. "We are shooting ourselves in the foot ... and we've got to figure out a way to work through that."

Highlights of his plan include trimming state employees' pay and reducing the overall state workforce up to 10 percent. He also argues the state's tax burden is far too high, and wants to reduce the Michigan Business Tax and eliminate personal property taxes, collected on items like business equipment and inventory.

Officials never seem quite sure how to run the state's finances, Rothwell said, so he suggests an independent council of "respected public and private sector" financial experts to complete revenue and spending estimates.

"Michigan has constantly been unable to predict what it's going to spend and what it's going to take in in revenues," he said.

The state also needs to invest in infrastructure and higher education, and encourage resource sharing between its thousands of local units of governments and school districts, he said.

Traverse Bay EDC head Tino Breithaupt also briefed the crowd about local EDC accomplishments in the past year and goals for 2010 and beyond. The EDC helped with retention or projected creation of about 1,000 local jobs and around $78.4 million in local investments, he said.

Breithaupt also said the EDC plans, among other projects, to analyze development projects that failed or were substantially delayed in the past decade.

"We need to learn from these lessons," he said.

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