Gov. Bobby Jindal kicked off his “Louisiana Working Tour” today with an address to the Rotary Club of Baton Rouge that highlighted economic development accomplishments, stressing that job creation is key to weathering the current economic downturn. Jindal pointed to 32,000 jobs and $4.3 billion in private capital investments announced since his term started in January 2008 He singled out the SNF chemical plant in Plaquemine, the V-Vehicle automobile manufacturing plant near Monroe and Shaw Modular Solutions nuclear construction facility in Lake Charles as some of the businesses that will further develop new industries in Louisiana. “It’s not just about creating jobs,” Jindal says. “It’s also about adding significant new drivers to our economy that in themselves create thousands of indirect jobs.”
Jindal says emphasis on workforce training and not raising taxes on business helped recruit high-caliber companies to the state. “We knew that raising taxes on our people and our businesses would be one of the worst things we could do during these current tough economic times,” he says.
Jindal says his current priorities are to streamline state government by eliminating or combining state agencies and working with the Post-Secondary Education Review Committee to evaluate post-secondary education for efficiency. Jindal says the tour, which will stop in every parish over the next several months, is a chance to talk about the importance of economic development to the state, what progress has been made to date and to find out what is important to each community.—Emma James
