Florida has 'a reputation for being business friendly' since Gov. Scott took office

Dusty Ricketts
Daily News

FORT WALTON BEACH — Gov. Rick Scott pledged to make Florida more business-friendly when he took office in January.

According to local economic development officials, he is doing just that.

“Since January I have responded to and seen more inquiries about Northwest Florida than I’ve seen in a few years, and it’s from major corporations,” said Shannon Ogletree, associate director of TEAM Santa Rosa, Santa Rosa County’s economic development council. “Before, large companies were not looking our way. They thought the regulatory process and just getting incentives, they didn’t think we had a pro business state, and now that has really changed with Gov. Scott at the helm.”

Scott has pledged to bring 700,000 new jobs to Florida in seven years. To help get there, several bills were approved in the recent legislative session to make it easier for businesses to relocate, expand or open in the state. Those include small business and property tax cuts, government restructuring to reduce the amount of time needed to approve or deny economic development initiatives and new incentives for high-wage research and development jobs.

Larry Sassano, president of the Okaloosa County Economic Development Council, said Scott’s plan is to make Florida the most business-friendly state in the country.

“That is a hefty goal. To do that you have to have the incentives,” Sassano said. “Those don’t just mean those dollar incentives. That means the ability to reduce the time it takes for a company to receive its approval for permitting and regulatory issues, and he’s put that into place. That’s a very important tool.

“It’s a dollar tool in terms of how the businesses look at it because it saves them time in starting their business, and time is money,” he added.

Sassano believes Scott’s work has been successful so far. He said he has talked with a Baltimore-based company that is planning to expand. Although the company has looked at several states, Sassano said he believes the company will choose Okaloosa County for its next expansion.

Scarlett Phaneuf, executive director of the Walton County Economic Development Alliance, said the measures Scott is taking to streamline the process for businesses have been effective.

“We’re already gaining more of a reputation for being business friendly and there seems to a lot more energy,” Phaneuf said. “Florida already has wonderful name recognition throughout the nation and throughout the globe, and now that we have a pro-business governor … I think that reputation will only increase and that will make our job easier when we go to call on companies and they’ve heard about the wonderful changes that we’re making.

“He’s making it easier to have one point of contact for all of those different agencies, reducing regulation, lessening of taxes and regulation measures to spur development and create competitive advantages for us to recruit companies, but also for us to be able to retain our current businesses,” she added.

All three local economic development agencies are working on projects to bring new businesses to the area.

The Walton County Economic Development Alliance has responded to request for proposals from about 12 companies since the beginning of the year, and Phaneuf said it is in serious talks with about half of them now. One of those is a technology company that would create 30 jobs in three years in South Walton. The alliance also talking to prospective tenants for the Northwest Florida Commerce Park in Mossy Head and the Walton County Industrial Park in Freeport.

Okaloosa’s EDC has 37 active projects, with about 20 percent of them requiring weekly or even daily meetings. If that 20 percent all comes to the county, that would create nearly 1,900 new high-wage jobs over the next two to three years.

TEAM Santa Rosa is currently in serious talks with roughly 15 companies to move to or expand in Santa Rosa County.

“(Scott is) doing a really good job of getting the word out and talking to companies, letting them know that they should look at Florida for job generation,” Ogletree said. “In the past, it wasn’t as strong.”