WHO HAS THE FACTS ABOUT JOB RECRUITMENT’S BENEFITS FOR LOCAL RESIDENTS? YOU DECIDE

Presented as a public service to illustrate how growth industry spin proliferates.

Here is an email exchange between Dave Gardner (City Council candidate), Jerry Heimlicher (City Council incumbent), and Mike Kazmierski of the Colorado Springs Regional Economic Development Corporation (EDC). Boldface emphasis is mine:

4/2/09   9:24 a.m.
TO: Jerry Heimlicher
FOM: Dave Gardner

Jerry,

Can you please e-mail to me, or e-mail a link to me, for the study you’re quoting about the number and percentage of new jobs that have gone to local residents?

If you can back up your statements with some solid, credible data, I will have to stop claiming we should heed the national studies showing that only 1 in 5 new jobs go to local residents.

Thanks,
Dave Gardner

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4/2/09   3:23 p.m.
TO: Dave Gardner
FROM: Jerry Heimlicher

Dave, Like I told you the information comes from the EDC, so you obviously will not believe it. The study is for ten years from 98 to 2008 and covers 144 companies in that period with a column for local, transferred and total.The total jobs are just over 25,000 with over 23,000 of them local hires names of the companies are listed and each has the detail. I am sure you can get it from the EDC. I assume they are cautious about giving out the company names without permission from the companies.

Dave, I know you are going to extremes to make your points about companies moving here, but really, use common sense, no company would locate here and move four of five employees from another state. The costs would eat them alive.

Jerry

———

4/3/09   8:42 a.m.
To: David White
Vice President, EDC
FROM: Dave Gardner

Jerry Heimlicher informs me there is a study in EDC’s possession regarding the number of jobs created and number that went to local residents from 1998 to 2008. Can you share a copy of that study with me?

Thanks,
Dave Gardner

———

4/3/09   10:33 a.m.
TO: Dave Gardner
FROM: Mike Kazmierski
President, EDC
cc: Jerry Heimlicher

Dave

Not that the facts will matter but what Jerry is referring to is the EDC data that tracks how the jobs “we announce” (primary jobs) are filled. I have attached our files and will caution you that this is our information and while it is not an exact science it is an excellent indicator based on survey data of our employers, and much more defendable than the BS number 4 out of 5 that you use.

This 93% number is also what you would expect from companies that are relocating or expanding as they must be cost sensitive. The cost to relocate an employee is very high, relocation costs, moving expenses selling a house etc, and then those employees expect to be paid the same high wages there were paid in their previous location, normally much higher then a replacement salaries would cost to hire here. This number changes every year and for 2008 we were at almost 96% local hires from jobs announced.

The other misinformation you have been aggressively proclaiming is that we have all this external growth - You have seen the data before and it is also below (and I’m sure will again be ignored) but you insist on making up numbers to suit your skewed view of the world. It is a defendable fact that more than half of our growth over the past 10 years is due to natural population increase, births over deaths so we have growth coming whether we like it our not -That is unless we create no jobs and then all of our young adults are forced to move to another community to get a job - Pretty sad option in my opinion.

DAVE’S NOTE HERE: SEE MY EXPLANATION OF WHY HIS BIRTH DATA, WHICH ALL COUNCIL MEMBERS LOVE TO REPEAT, IS DECEPTIVE AND MY DATA IS ACCURATE

Additionally, we lose on average 1,900 primary jobs a year that do not “just’ reappear -These are the Intel jobs that are gone for good but the 1,000 Intel employees and their families are still here? Would be nice if we could keep that talent in town. Finally, for anyone that says “growth does not pay it’s own way” just look at the impact on the City and the Utilities when the home building stopped. That growth caused a $40M hole in the Utilities budget alone - Then you wonder why the Utilities rates just went up 17% so I guess we now get to pay our own way. Check you facts before you try to blame that increase on SDS.

As for 1A which you have been so vocally against - So 1A is bad - What do you propose we do (it’s your community too) to find jobs for these 7,800 new unemployed and their families? What are the options? Hope they are more than ideologies because these people need real jobs and there will be many more in our community to follow them to the ranks of the unemployed before this economy turns. Even after it turns, the business world will change and good jobs will be even more scarce in the future and other communities will be even more aggressive in attracting them to meet their demand for quality jobs while we continue our decline.

Mike

———-

4/3/09   12:09 p.m.
TO: Mike Kazmierski
FROM: Dave Gardner

Mike,

I appreciate finally being given the data. It appears from your email that you haven’t been reading up on my recommendations. But I don’t expect you and I to reach agreement. However, I would like to see if the data you’ve provided is authentic and meaningful. If it is, then I’m sure you’ll be glad to confirm this by providing the answers to these questions. I will be glad to publicly eat crow if and when you confirm this, proving that my data is wrong. In fact we can schedule a news conference where I will do that. I promise!

1. Who performed the study that provided the data in the file you sent?

2. How did they define local hire? It appears from the two categories, “local hire” and “transferred” that anyone who was not relocated by the company is considered a local hire in this data. Is that correct?

Thanks,
Dave

———-

4/3/09   1:37 p.m.
TO: Dave Gardner
FROM: Mike Kazmierski

Dave

I’m sorry if I am lumping you in with Sean Page an others that have attacked me personally and EDC for just trying to do what we can to help people get jobs. We are just a small non-profit and like every other business out there we are struggling with budget and resource issues at a time when we should be doing more, not less, to help all those families that really need a job.

As for your questions - The info I sent you is not a study but as I said in the e-mail just our internal information that we get from companies we work with. It is as accurate as we can be as far as getting from the company what they intend to do. We do not check with them later to verify because we are not staffed to manage numbers or to do surveys. There are economist in the community that can do that but the cost is thousands of dollars per effort. That said, we find that our experience with companies shows that they do everything they can to avoid moving employees and since many of the announcements we have are companies expanding, they do not have employees to move because they want to maintain their existing operations where ever they are and just grow their business here.

There is no question that people move into Colorado Springs without a job, often from Southern Colorado, just to find a job and they are reflected as local because they are not moved here by the company - Good luck getting exact information on that number. In the end, their is no question that the number of jobs we provide to the community is mostly filled by Colorado Springs residents but exactly what that number is, is difficult to determine. It is not 100% nor is it 20% as you allege but something in between - based on our survey of employers I would put my bet on something over 90%.

I know that is not the exact number and the detailed information you would like but it is the best we have. If you would like to commission Dave Bamberger or Fred Crowley our local economist to do a study on this they would love to get some business.

Best of luck in the closing days of your campaign.

Mike

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4/3/09   2:28 p.m.
TO: Mike Kazmierski
FROM: Dave Gardner

Mike,

Thanks for this. In light of this I would just ask that you not characterize my data as “BS” or otherwise claim that I am not being factual, since my data comes from a reputable, disinterested economic research organization and yours is so clearly flawed. I appreciate your honesty about it. Perhaps our local experience would deviate from the statistics in the national study I cite. But what you have here does not make a strong case for that. Does this sound like the fair and gentlemanly thing to do? Just because you believe something to be true, does not make it true. Using this 93% figure not only as a justification for 1A, but even as a PROMISE to the voters of future results strikes me as reckless and self-serving.

Dave