South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

Greenville News: Gov. Nikki Haley wins praise for industrial recruiting effort
Governor, despite some stumbles, says she’s focused on job growth
By David Dykes | Staff Writer

He was on vacation in South Carolina, and it was 4:30 in the morning when J. Michael Luttig’s BlackBerry buzzed. He was up, drinking coffee and eating toast.

As he leaned over and picked up his BlackBerry, he noticed a text. It was from Gov. Nikki Haley.

“You’ve got a dynamic person with a force of personality and then just a singular commitment to economic development for the state,” said Luttig, Boeing Co.’s executive vice president and general counsel. “The word really is ‘force of personality.’ That kind of captures it.”

“She must work 24-7,” he said.

Luttig and other corporate and elected officials say Haley is establishing an aggressive economic-development plan as governor, with jobs as a centerpiece in the first year of her administration. They say the Indian-American mother of two is a charismatic newcomer who, despite her relative inexperience, is charging ahead on South Carolina’s behalf.

They say she does her corporate homework, calls chief executives directly and asks them what they need. …

Josef Kerscher, president of BMW Manufacturing, whose only North American plant is near Greer, said in a statement, “BMW has enjoyed a great partnership with each governor of South Carolina since our announcement in 1992. In our collaboration with Gov. Haley, she has been very accessible, both with our team here in South Carolina and in Munich. She is very willing to listen and learn about issues that affect our business and how she can help support our activities.” …

“She’s engaging. She’s focused. She’s energetic,” said former House Speaker David Wilkins, a Greenville attorney who has been in several meetings with Haley.

“She makes sure the company CEO knows that South Carolina wants you to invest in our state, that we want you to come here, that we have the right business climate, that we have the right people and that we have a governor who will remain interested in you once you commit to come and will stay engaged with you.”

“I would give Nikki an ‘A’ on everything that she’s done so far,” said Otis Rawl, the state Chamber’s president and chief executive. “From a business perspective, she’s been right there on all our issues,” including tort reform and incentives for companies to locate in South Carolina, he said.

One company said Haley’s assertiveness played a key role in its decision to establish a new production facility in Greenville County.

Amy’s Kitchen, a maker of natural and organic convenience foods, in May announced a $63 million investment expected to generate more than 700 new jobs over six years.

The company was recruited heavily by North Carolina, but “Nikki caught wind of that and she took it personally,” said Mark Rudolph, the company’s chief financial officer. …

Haley understands “the power of the partnership” between government and the private sector and “the interdependence of each on the other,” Luttig said. “She gets that.”…

“The truth is I sleep, eat and and breathe jobs in South Carolina,” she said. “That’s just how I am. I am constantly trying to figure out what industries we need to touch, who we need to follow back up with, what else needs to happen and there is kind of a method to my madness.”

She will remain relentless in her pursuit of jobs because they are important to large cities and small towns alike, Haley said.

“The press is giving me a hard time for announcing 50 jobs here or there and saying it’s not a big deal,” she said. “Ask those 50 people who got those jobs. It’s a very big deal, and every one of them is important to me. Every one.”

The entire story is available here.

Our tax system as currently constructed isn’t working – not for individuals, not for families, and not for businesses. For too long we’ve come at tax policy with a Band-Aid approach: see a problem, patch the problem, forget the problem. That’s a terrible way to go about things, as inevitably it creates holes and shifts the burden from one group to another. Far too often those that end up shouldering that burden are our small businesses, those same small businesses that drive South Carolina’s economy. We need a top-to-bottom overhaul of our system that starts with looking at the true cost of every single tax and fee we impose on our citizens and ends with South Carolina families and businesses keeping more of what they earn. The first two tax reforms I will push are the elimination of the small business and personal income taxes.  When South Carolina stops punishing our business owners and individuals for their successes and instead starts to reward them, they will reinvest in our state, hire more workers, and our economy will start to move.

As a small businesswoman and accountant by trade – my first job was keeping the books for our family business when I was 13 – I understand that our focus has to be on reining in our spending. Government is not responsible in the way it handles taxpayer money, and as a result does a terrible job of protecting the wallets of the people and the bottom lines of businesses. Far too many politicians don’t understand the value of a dollar, nor do they understand that this money does not belong to elected officials but to the citizens who pay it. Government needs to be accountable to those citizens and spend taxpayer dollars efficiently and effectively.

I believe every life has a value and is blessed by God – my husband was adopted and my pro-life convictions stem from the fact I feel the blessings of that value every day knowing someone chose life for him. I see it every day in my two children as I watch them grow. My hope is that we continue to encourage and work towards educating that value of life to everyone.

We live in the 21st century and yet our state government still operates under a 19th century structure and mentality. It’s a problem that infects our state at so many different levels, whether it be the fact that we have multiple agencies and programs doing the same thing and wasting tax dollars or that our state is so legislatively dominated that we don’t have a single person to hold accountable for the problems we’re facing. When we restructure our state government and make it accountable to the people, two things will happen: no longer will decisions be made in back rooms by a select few, and the finger pointing and evasion of political responsibility will have to stop. South Carolina simply cannot compete in today’s ever-changing world under this backwards system, and I am more determined than ever before to usher in the changes the people of this state both need and deserve.

Few things are as clearly defined as the right of individual Americans to own and use firearms. The right to bear arms was deemed so critical by our Founders that they spelled it out in absolute terms, and it is my belief that any governmental action that undermines that right is in turn undermining the very freedoms that built our great nation. I hold a Concealed Weapons Permit myself, and in this state we have issues that make it difficult for CWP holders to rightfully carry – we need to make the rules that govern carrying far more simple. As governor, I will continue to fight against any government infringement on the 2nd Amendment.