Legislature seeking overhaul of economic development system

By Brice Wallace 

Utah’s economic development system would be revamped under a legislative bill that seeks to change agencies’ mindset about what economic development means.

HB348, which at press time had passed through the House of Representatives on a 60-4 vote and moved to the Senate, would create an overarching Unified Economic Opportunity Commission, shuffle and/or change the names of several government agencies, and align economic development stakeholder efforts so that they “pull together.”

“Really what it does, this bill attempts to define a new mission and vision for the state of Utah,” said the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Timothy Hawkes, R-Centerville.

The bill spells out an approach espoused by new Gov. Spencer Cox, who has said that he prefers “economic opportunity” over “economic development” and puts a focus on the individual success of all Utahns.

“We want to start talking about economic development in new and different ways,” Hawkes told the House Economic Development and Workforce Services Committee. “When I say, ‘economic development,’ I think to most people there’s sort of this vague sense of ‘that’s something businessy, but we don’t really know what it means. Maybe it’s financial incentives or something like that.’”

The bill attempts to “talk about it and frame it in terms of economic opportunity because ‘development’ doesn’t really mean something, but ‘opportunity’ does,” he said.

Much of the 300-page bill changes the word “development” to “opportunity” — for example, the Governor’s Office of Economic Development (GOED) would be renamed the Governor’s Office of Economic Opportunity, or GO Utah. “But it’s an important shift and it’s not just atmospherics,” Hawkes said. “We mean it.”

The proposed Unified Economic Opportunity Commission would be chaired by the governor and include the top officials of several government departments; education officials; state legislative leaders; representatives focused on housing, cities and rural counties; plus several non-voting members. It would include several subcommittees related to specific economic topics. Among the commission’s duties are to “develop, coordinate and lead a comprehensive statewide economic development strategy that unifies and coordinates economic development efforts in the state.”

“One of the primary goals of this is to get these different agencies to talk to each other, to have a forum where we can all come together and work on economic opportunity issues, and while doing that, make sure that we aren’t duplicating efforts,” Dan Hemmert, GOED’s executive director, told the committee.

Hemmert said “breaking down silos” would ensure that those agencies “not go down the same lane next to each other but instead to all walk down the same lane together.”

Hemmert, a former legislator, said that a few years ago, redundancy of efforts was revealed during a review of the Utah Science Technology and Research (USTAR) initiative. “As we were looking at that agency, one thing we learned was that Agency A had no idea what Agency B was doing, even if there was a lot of overlap,” he said. Legislators also “got different answers” when asking about the state’s economic development strategy, he said.

Hawkes said those agencies have performed well individually but having their “fiefdoms” has resulted in a lack of coordination related to economic opportunity for individual Utahns. “And the goal here is to align those people, get everybody rowing in the same direction under this unified vision,” he said.

During committee questions, Hemmert was asked about the GOED name change. “GOED is a past-tense word. … GO Utah is a future-tense word. One’s looking backward; the other is looking forward,” he said.

Hemmert also said GOED “makes us think a little bit more about business,” is “less personalized” and instead is focused on companies, corporations and big projects, whereas “economic opportunity” would have government “think about the people more.”

The attitude of state government’s economic development efforts 10-12 years ago — coming out of the Great Recession — was “jobs, jobs, jobs,” Hawkes said. The challenges “are less about getting the jobs here now but [instead] dealing with growth.”

Hawkes and Hemmert both said the bill is not a destination point. Hawkes said it is an important step “as the ship of state tries to turn and pivot, really, to capitalize on today’s needs and today’s opportunities.” Hemmert said he expects to see related bills every year over the next few years.

This year’s general session ends March 5.

If the bill passes, it would mean a new name for GOED, which was formed in 2005 at the insistence of then-Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. The Department of Community and Economic Development was split to create GOED and the Department of Community and Culture.