Doing Business in Wisconsin

John Torinus is spot on. 

Several CEOs are downright sulfurous in their private assessments about doing business in Wisconsin. Their objections include personal and corporate tax increases, recent court rulings and legislative proposals to raise liabilities for corporations. The list also includes proposed expansions of regulation through bills like the one on climate change, new pro-union laws, the fiscal disarray in Madison and the proclivity of the state to be an outlier when it comes to conformity with federal taxes and regulations.

Call them crybabies if you like. But these are the guys making the decisions about where jobs are retained, reduced or added.

And, not so incidentally, they are human beings. They want to be liked and appreciated. They look for signals, and if they don’t like what they see and hear, they go elsewhere.

Some would say the state remains a good place to do business, and there certainly are many positives, like the competitive business tax rates, the pool of skilled labor and investments in education at all levels.

But CEOs are paid to look ahead, to try to figure out where things are going. The changes in the business climate, positive or negative, have a disproportionate effect on their thinking.

As of late, many don’t like the signals coming out of China, Washington, D.C., or Madison. They will assess the totality of those signals, and they will act on that assessment as they shape their strategies. Political leaders who don’t understand or don’t care about the signals they are sending can’t pretend to be serious about job retention or creation.