1997 Rural Summit
March 3, 1997
It's exciting for us to come to an event like the Rural Summit to report that you are truly rewriting the record books in small-town South Carolina.
Together we shared a unified vision these past two years of all that rural South Carolina can accomplish. We worked together to pass Enterprise Zones and the Rural Development Act. The Department of Commerce started implementing its strategic plan. And at the end of these two years, as Bob said, rural South Carolina brought home over $3 billion in projects and 16,000 new jobs.
Rural growth in '96 made history for the second year in a row...to the tune of $1.75 billion in capital investment and 8,500 new jobs.
And thanks to the RDA, in the counties that needed it most, capital investment shot up by 162 percent. The job count doubled.
And what about that "downside" the critics predicted, that RDA would steal the thunder of our urban centers? The opposite happened, with the top tiers of developed counties actually landing 58 percent more investment and 25 percent more jobs than two years ago!
But the good news we predicted did turn out to be true: that when rural South Carolina prospers, all of South Carolina prospers.
We know that passing a jobs bill is only half the battle (and that battle by itself about killed us!). To win the war, communities have to have the resources to support those jobs.
Some of you may know that Maceo Nance at Commerce's Community Development Division has been working on a plan to help equip rural areas with those resources. And it's not a one-size-fits-all solution. It's a county-by-county strategy.
For the first time ever, Commerce will be assigning full-time staff to every single one of the 20 least developed counties. It's that staffer's job to become as well-versed as the locals on what that community needs to grow.
They will work in total partnership with local governments and county councils to develop strategies that are right for them: how to market the community to industry, and how to support industry once it gets there.
Double-digit unemployment anywhere in South Carolina is unacceptable. It's avoidable. And we are 100 percent committed...through coordinated planning and forward thinking...to addressing it from the local level on up.
Even as we lay the groundwork for a new plan of action, we must also fortify existing roads to our future: our hard and human infrastructure.
The most critical road is the one that leads from impossibility to prosperity...and that's education.
No matter where they come from, every child should enter the modern workforce and a new millennium from level ground.
Certainly there's a disparity between the resources of our school districts statewide. But our school technology plan is helping bridge that gap...making high-tech learning tools part of life for every student...so that distance can't keep a child from experiencing the Governor's School for Science and Math...so disadvantage won't keep a student from exploring the World Wide Web.
That same philosophy is shaping our approach to educational standards. Every school in this state should be striving toward a set of common goals...clear, rigorous standards for what every student should learn.
Clearly, when a national survey shows that even the students think high school is easy, we have our mandate.
It's time we made it tougher to earn a high school diploma by raising graduation requirements by four credits...and only in basic areas of study.
It's time we gave our children the best and most challenging educators...through better training and better pay.
And it's time we set for our schools globally-competitive standards for learning. The PASS Commission is a group of some of our brightest stars in education and business..and most of them are also parents! They'll spend the next six months looking at standards around the world, how we measure up, and how we can help push our children over the high bar.
But there's another type of infrastructure we must address if we are to move forward...not just human, but highway, infrastructure.
The roadblocks standing between us and the businesses who want to grow here must be cleared...or the progress we've made together will stall.
In my State of the State address, I called for an independent transportation infrastructure bank that would help us fund our top priority projects...like Highway 170 in Beaufort County and the Bobby Jones Expressway in Aiken.
Since the bank would issue its own bonds, we could fund these massive projects without risking our AAA credit rating. And we could do it without a tax increase.
The beauty for rural areas is that once these massive projects are off the table, DOT's resources will be freed up for smaller projects that have been long buried.
Nothing less than South Carolina's future job creation and growth rests on our highways and bridges. And after creating 50,000 new, high-paying jobs these last two years, we will do everything in our power to keep that growth going strong.
Because families now have a chance for lives of independence like never before. Over the past two years, 13,000 families have left welfare, hopefully never to return.
Now we're taking Family Independence into its second phase...under the name South Carolina WORKS.
I've been asking Chambers of Commerce across the state to help us match their members who need employees with Family Independence recipients ready to work.
Today I issue a similar challenge to our business leaders here: to look at your workplace and find a place for at least one welfare recipient there.
There are about 16,000 employable recipients across South Carolina...but there are over 95,000 employers.
You can be a local family's stepping stone out of poverty. And you can help lead your community into greater renewal and opportunity.
That's the vision behind all the work we've done...in education, infrastructure, economic growth....to bring all of South Carolina into a new era of excellence. Every region. Every county. Every family.
Yes, we've lived through some tough setbacks...especially our textile communities. And there's plenty of work left to be done.
But instead of being defeated, we're diversifying. Instead of losing heart, we have new hope. Because we've forged partnerships that are unshakable, a workforce that is unparalleled and a vision that is united.
But ultimately the heartbeat of change...the vision for confronting your future...must come from inside you, not from inside the state capitol.
Just like Glenn Jacobus (juh-KOH-bus) told you last year, "Either you're green and growing...or you're ripe and rotting."
There's absolutely no reason on this earth...with the incredible potential of people and opportunity all across South Carolina...that every community in the state shouldn't be green and growing.
We commit to you today...that if you will just plant the seed, we'll be there to help you tend the garden. And from the commitment made today, generations of South Carolinians are going to reap the harvest.