(WisBusiness) TUES News Summary — 5 May 2009

— Tim Cooley, Madison’s new economic development director, says creating and keeping new jobs is the key to the economic future of the capital city and its region.

Though Madison enjoys benefits of having state government and UW- Madison centered in its boundaries, Cooley said without permanent new jobs the glittering condos and office space are illusions of prosperity.

And right now, during this economic downturn, he says getting ready for the time when conditions improve is imperative. To that end, he’s working on an “ag-bio cluster” that could help provide new manufacturing jobs that “fit in well with the sensitivity to the environment and the workforce we’re developing.”

But he told a WisBusiness.com luncheon yesterday at the Madison Club that he sees a “huge gap” in the amount of early stage risk capital available. That kind of money can help start new companies and get their leaders to put down the kind of roots that will keep them here. “The paralysis (of investors) is rampant,” said Cooley, who has returned to his hometown after a 30-year hiatus doing business in places including Southern California. “I fell in love with the city again.”

— Cooley didn’t paper over some of Madison’s liabilities. He said priorities include the East Washington corridor and entrance to the capital city from the east. “Why we have to come in past the Department of Corrections and a porn shop …”

And he conceded that no matter how modern the airport, airlines may be tempted to withdraw when fuel prices rise again. Madison’s national airport status is “third tier.” Said Cooley, “No matter how you cut it, that’s where Madison is.”

He said high-speed rail could be a good way to hook up Madison with Chicago and Minneapolis but doesn’t want that to detract from the other transportation links.

He also boosted the benefits of tourism and the Monona Terrace convention center, saying adding a new Marcus Corp. hotel downtown across from its current Hilton property could bring in bigger conventions and push smaller events to other hotels downtown. “I really think this will raise all ships,” he said.

— The continued downsizing of traditional media, especially newspapers, is being felt everywhere, but one place in particular: shrinking coverage of America’s statehouses.

Madison isn’t immune, with the loss of at least three correspondents in recent years writing either for newspapers or newspaper chains.

Scott Bauer, Madison correspondent for the Associated Press, says he typically sees only eight to 10 colleagues a day in the Capitol pressroom, once a buzzing hub of activity during legislative sessions.

David Stoeffler, a former Lee Newspapers executive who worked at the Wisconsin State Journal as an editor and reporter, recalls providing gavel-to-gavel coverage of the budget-writing Joint Finance Committee in the mid-1980s — side by side with reporters from the Milwaukee Journal and Sentinel, Madison’s Capital Times, the Janesville Gazette, Wisconsin Public TV, AM news radio reporters and the occasional commercial TV news person. “The chance of something slipping into the budget bill without one of us knowing about it was pretty slim,” says Stoeffler, now a news industry consultant.

Read more on statehouse reporting in a new WisBusiness article: http://www.wisbusiness.com/index.Iml?Article=157621

— The state Department of Tourism spent $251,306 to create the “Live Like You Mean It” slogan and logo when costs like research and branding for the platform are figured in, about five times more than initially estimated, according to records obtained by WisPolitics.com .

State brand manager Sarah Klavas said those costs weren’t included in the $50,000 estimate the Tourism Department released when the slogan and logo were unveiled to widespread criticism because they covered work that went well beyond creating “Live Like You Mean It.”

That included things like collecting input on what makes Wisconsin unique, holding focus groups and creating input on what makes the state stand out. All that went into “Originality Rules,” which is the platform for the new Tourism slogan and logo.

“A logo and a theme are just one small part of an overall brand strategy,” Klavas said.

When the new slogan and logo were unveiled in March, the state said it paid about $50,000 to contractor Red Brown Kle to come up with both.

The documents WisPolitics obtained through an open records request show the state paid the firm $55,730 for its work on the project and another $1,500 to a subcontractor under RBK for illustrating the logo of a figure doing a cartwheel.

— A proposed statewide smoking ban is beginning to move through the Legislature as standalone legislation, with committee hearings on the bill scheduled in both chambers this week and Assembly leadership proposing the ban for a floor vote next Wednesday.

— The state has been awarded a $600,500 Joyce Foundation grant to boost the skills of low-wage workers. The funds will support the Regional Industry Skills Education initiative formed in partnership with the Department of Workforce Development, the governor’s office and the Wisconsin Technical College System three years ago with the aid of a $1 million Joyce Foundation grant.

See details: http://dcf.wisconsin.gov/building_bridges_summit/default.htm

— Major League Baseball Commissioner Allan H. “Bud” Selig will deliver the charge to the graduates at each of the four University of Wisconsin-Madison spring commencement undergraduate ceremonies on Saturday and Sunday, May 16-17, at the Kohl Center, 601 W. Dayton St.

The Milwaukee native was elected the ninth commissioner of baseball on July 9, 1998, by a unanimous vote of the 30 Major League Baseball club owners.

Read more about Selig: http://www.wisbusiness.com/index.Iml?Article=157567

— The first-ever Wisconsin Poverty Report finds that nearly 11 percent of Wisconsin’s population and one in seven children lived in poverty in 2007 and that the need for food – and almost always with it is poverty – has grown substantially as the recession deepened in the last two years.

It also estimates that, given Wisconsin’s rising unemployment rate, poverty rates may have grown by 1.8 percent since 2007.

The report, prepared by the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Institute for Research on Poverty, aims to contribute to Wisconsin’s anti-poverty goals by describing the nature and extent of the problem.

See more: http://www.wisbusiness.com/index.Iml?Article=157564

— Project HealthDesign, a national program designed to support health and information technology pioneers to create a new generation of personal health records systems, has been awarded a $5.3 million addition to its grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, bringing the project’s total funding to $10 million.

The award will allow the project that began in 2006 to continue into 2012.

See details: http://www.wisbusiness.com/index.Iml?Article=157566

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