New Commerce chief reorganizes department, focuses on jobs

New Idaho state Commerce Director Jeff Sayer made his first budget pitch to lawmakers this morning, and he noted that he’s reorganized the department, with the advice of former Commerce Director Jim Hawkins, to eliminate duplication and get staffers back out in communities working on economic development. “We now have a 13 percent reduction in our workforce, and part of the objective of that was to find money,” Sayer told JFAC, to funnel into the department’s top priority: Jobs.

He said the department’s marketing division was “replicating efforts that the tourism division was already doing, and we were able to collapse four positions into one.” Two other divisions were eliminated in favor of creating a “business attraction team.” Sayer said the department is “becoming laser-focused on who our customer is, and we’ve declared to the world and ourselves that our customer is business, both existing and new, and we’re doing everything we can to fulfill that obligation.”

First priority, he said, is “to protect and retain what we have - we have to remember that our companies are just as vulnerable to being recruited out of state as we are to recruit other states’ companies into ours.” Second, he said, “Our fastest source of jobs is going to come from growing our own companies.” And third priority is attraction of new businesses to the state. One of Idaho’s greatest strengths, he said, is the momentum it already has going in certain key industries. “It’s in our best interest to focus on those industries,” Sayer said. That means spending time with business leaders in those sectors to “have them help us figure out who we need to recruit,” that would be “complementary to those industries and can help them grow even more.”

Sayer told lawmakers, “Many of you know I come from industry. I’m a CPA by background, I started my career in Silicon Valley with Ernst & Young. I spent most of my career with small- to medium-sized businesses and I have a little bit of experience in the ups and downs.”

He also shared some positive economic news: Idaho exports hit $5.89 billion in 2011, the third record year for exports in the last four years; they were up 14.3 percent from 2010. Tourism also has begun to pick back up after a dip during the economic downturn.