Rep. Lois Capps, D-Santa Barbara, recently sent an email referencing an article she authored in Politico, an online political magazine, titled “Regional Strategy Key to Clean Energy.” In it she waxed philosophic about how new green energy opportunities were key to our future, and how California and the Central Coast were uniquely positioned to take advantage of these opportunities and use them to grow our economy to a new, clean green nirvana.
If only. Perhaps our Congresswoman should spend a little more time trying to keep what clean companies we do have in California, in California. Just this year to date, we have had at least five clean companies flee California in some manner for greener pastures:
» Aptera Motors, which had plans to hire several thousand direct employees and create probably 10,000 supplier-related jobs to design and manufacture ultra-efficient cars, is looking to now manufacture somewhere Back East. They will not manufacture in California.
» Calisolar Inc., as in “California Solar,” is a solar energy company that is planning to invest $750 million in Ontario. Unfortunately, it’s not Ontario, Calif., but Ontario, Ohio.
» Fallbrook Technologies is a California-based clean tech company that designs efficient transmissions for vehicles. It already has an operations center in Texas and is expanding there, instead of California.
» Sharp is a huge Japan-based electronics company, whose Solar Energy Solutions Group is relocating to Washington from California. It can’t be for the sunshine. Sharp is a leading manufacturer of solar cells and produces solar cells in Tennessee and Japan, not in California.
» WindStream Technologies Inc., which manufactures small wind turbines designed for residential energy use. It is scheduled to produce more than 40,000 units in three years — only not in California but Indiana.
Then there is our very own Carpinteria-based Clipper Windpower, which manufactures its wind turbines in Iowa instead of here at home. So much for our “clean-energy regional innovation clusters” as the Congresswoman described them.
Including all industries, there have been well more than 100 such events statewide just since January. According to sources that track such activities, the rate of companies “disinvesting” in California is five times higher this year than 2009 and about twice as high as 2010. The rate of businesses fleeing our state is accelerating.
Don’t blame these companies. They are simply doing the math and making businesslike, economically rational decisions to be competitive and profitable. Blame your government for creating conditions in which California companies can’t operate in California if they want to survive.
Between our 50th ranking among the states in business friendliness, our 48th ranking in taxes and schools, and a regulatory environment that discourages manufacturing and increases costs, is it any wonder that companies are fleeing our state for friendlier grounds? These are self-inflicted wounds.
Rep. Capps and the rest of our politicians from the local to the federal level need to get serious about making our state — and country, for that matter — an attractive place to do business. As long as we continue to pursue our current policies we will continue to see companies leave California. Why would anyone expect otherwise?
There is a limit to how much people are willing to pay for good weather, and it would appear we’ve found it. This happy talk from Mrs. Capps needs to be backed up with rational public policy if we are really serious about reviving our economy and growing jobs here at home.
Our tax and regulatory environment needs to be rationalized with the rest of the country if we want to keep jobs here and grow. It’s that simple. It is a competitive environment both domestically and globally, and at the moment California is a sitting duck.
These platitudes Mrs. Capps offers are meaningless without actual business-friendly policies that encourage companies to stay and grow here, not elsewhere as they do now. Naturally, Mrs. Capps’ solution is to support yet another bill that will spend more money we don’t have to encourage “green” energy and the like, in essence having the government setting priorities instead of the market.
Perhaps our Congresswoman is unaware of the experience of Spain, which has nearly bankrupted the country trying to be a green energy leader. Studies performed on the effectiveness of this “green-jobs” effort showed that Spain actually lost 2.2 regular jobs for every green job created. Portugal, Scotland and others have had similarly poor results. Where do we sign up?!
Green energy or any other kind of business or industry needs to be economically cost competitive and viable without requiring the government to continually “invest” massive amounts of money to keep it afloat. We cannot afford to divert scarce resources to overly support politically preferred industries. R&D funding is one thing, but trying to force a square peg in a round hole through brute force is quite another.
What Mrs. Capps and too many of our elected officials don’t seem to grasp is that more government is not the solution to our problems, it is the problem. Uncontrolled borrowing and spending by government, trying to pick winners (e.g. green energy) and losers (conventional energy), costly and destructive regulations like Obamacare and the recent Dodd-Frank financial bill, an EPA run amok, and constantly threatening to raise taxes are what is holding our economy back.
Our government, at all levels, is raising the cost of employment and doing business and then wondering why employers aren’t rushing out to hire people. In the meantime, real people are struggling to keep their jobs, or find one, or hold on to their greatly devalued homes. It’s a tragedy deserving more from our leaders than Mrs. Capps’ misguided approach.
— Tom Watson is a Santa Barbara businessman and was the 2010 Republican nominee for the 23rd Congressional District.