By Brice Wallace
Speaking recently at an economic summit in Salt Lake City, Utah’s new governor saw the perfect metaphor for the “Utah roadmap” and the state’s economy just a few blocks away.
Construction to earthquake-proof the Salt Lake Temple does not involve tearing down the temple but instead “make what seemed like the perfect, beautiful building even better and even stronger,” Spencer Cox said at the Economic Outlook & Public Policy Summit, presented by the Salt Lake Chamber and the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute.
Utah justifiably can be proud of its accomplishments, he said. “It would be very easy for us to just keep doing what we’re doing because it’s working so well. And, of course, the adage is, ‘If it’s not broke, don’t fix it,’” Cox said. “But I believe if it’s not broke, that we can still make it better, and that’s exactly what we have to do.”
In a wide-ranging speech and Q&A session, Cox spoke of spreading economic opportunity throughout the state, in part by boosting education and workforce training, and funding infrastructure to enable Utah’s economy to grow even further.
Much of what was said falls under the “Opportunity For Everyone” banner. For example, while Utah’s overall poverty rate is less than 9 percent, it’s closer to 15 percent for Latinos and 29 percent for black Utahns. Meanwhile, economies in some of Utah’s rural counties are “heading the wrong direction” and “the people are being left behind,” he said.
Cox said he wants the focus on economic development to be people. “We’ve forgotten that economic development is not an end in and of itself. It’s a means to an end. It’s a means to blessing the lives of people, to improving their lives, to help them move forward so that they can provide for their families,” the governor said.
For example, job growth is great, but Utah must make sure it has skilled people to fill those jobs, he said.
“It means absolutely nothing for us to incentivize a company to bring a hundred jobs or a thousand jobs here if no one here in the state of Utah is qualified to get those jobs,” he said. If people are brought in from outside Utah to fill those jobs, the growth will not be a blessing to Utahns’ lives but instead only lead to more traffic congestion, higher housing prices and more air quality problems.
Educating Utahns for job opportunities now and in the future must start in early childhood, focus on equity in educational opportunity, and continue in college and throughout the rest of people’s lives, he said.
The governor called for change in the mindset that education occurs during approximately the first 20 years of life and work comes after that. “That doesn’t work in this new economy,” Cox said.
To boost the idea of “upskilling” Utahns, Cox pushed the notion of an innovation fund for K-12 and higher education to partner with businesses to figure out how to better educate Utah’s workforce.
“This is where I think we have the biggest opportunity for success as a state and as a nation, is this idea of workforce development and helping people understand that we’re constantly learning, reinventing ourselves, finding new jobs and new ways to produce in this economy,” he said.
The “Opportunity For Everyone” mantra also is reflected in his call for infrastructure investment, both along the Wasatch Front and in rural Utah. Increasing the amount of FrontRunner tracks in certain areas will peel time off of workers’ commutes while alleviating vehicle traffic, which helps address air quality issues, he said. It would help ensure “that future generations will be able to get where they need to go and keep economic activity alive here along the Wasatch Front.”
Cox encouraged the Legislature to invest in roads in Utah’s small towns, many of which he said are seeing “catastrophic infrastructure failure.”
“If you’re an entrepreneur in a rural area and you want to expand a business or move a business there, you can’t do that if you don’t have broadband, you can’t do that if you don’t have roads that people can drive on, you can’t do that if you don’t have natural gas or electricity at the rate that you need,” he said. “Those things matter, and we have to be willing to invest.”
Among lessons taught by the COVID-19 pandemic that can be applied in the future are that remote capabilities will allow people to work wherever they want — obviously a benefit to rural Utah. “Your ZIP code shouldn’t determine how long you live, your ZIP code shouldn’t determine how much money you make, you’re ZIP code shouldn’t determine any of those things,” Cox said.
The new governor acknowledged he doesn’t have all the answers and that his administration, being new, will make mistakes.
“We are not going to be perfect, but my pledge to you is that they are going to be mistakes of commission. They are going to be mistakes of trying,” he said.
Using another metaphor, he recalled a youth baseball game where his father “really got on me” after Cox looked at a third strike when he should have been swinging the bat.
Utahns expect and deserve that effort as the new administration strives to advance the economy and thereby allow people to provide for their families; boost the state’s standard of living; and continue to make Utah “the best place in the world to live, to work and to raise a family,” he said.
“We’re going to strike out sometimes,” Cox said, “but we’re going to strike out because we’re trying, not because we’re sitting back and watching.”
