Six Things To Know About The STL 2030 Jobs Plan

FOR GREATER ST. LOUIS INC., the new business-civic organization that officially came into being on Jan. 1, it’s crunch time.

On Wednesday GSTL unveiled its updated STL 2030 Jobs Plan, the centerpiece of an ambitious effort to generate high-quality jobs, put the region at the forefront of new technologies, and drive faster and more inclusive economic growth to help St. Louis shed its status as a laggard among the nation’s metros.

Among the plan’s strategies: Restoring the city of St. Louis as the jobs and cultural core of the metro area; strengthening support for small businesses and entrepreneurs; and building on the region’s existing status as a hub for next-generation industries including bioscience, geospatial and advanced manufacturing.

“It’s really good to have a jobs plan with a clear set of strategies at a time of market disruption and unprecedented federal investment,” said consultant Bruce Katz of New Localism Associates, who wrote the plan, during a Zoom interview with McPherson.

Katz was referring to the nation’s emergence from the COVID-19 pandemic and massive spending by the federal government to stabilize the economy and spur further growth. He added, confidently: “St. Louis is much better prepared to make it through 2021 than just about any other metro in the United States.”

Confidence or hubris? Only time will tell, but GSTL has already weathered some controversy.

After the organization released a draft of its plan in December, some area officials such as St. Charles County Executive Steve Ehlmann criticized the plan sharply. Ehlmann warned that the plan failed to address issues such as the city’s high levels of crime, and he called for greater geographic and political balance on the leadership team and board of GSTL.

In response, GSTL Chief Executive Jason Hall noted that the jobs plan is not intended to be a comprehensive plan that addresses all the critical issues facing the region. Since the draft was released Hall and his team have spent time with Ehlmann and others in St. Charles County, as well as businesses and nonprofits from across the region, to listen to their feedback.

GSTL is the result of a merger of five business and civic organizations, including Civic Progress, the St. Louis Regional Chamber and Downtown St. Louis Inc. With the release of its updated plan, the organization is poised to play a major role in the future of the St. Louis metro.

Here are six things to know about the STL 2030 Jobs Plan.

1. With further waves of federal money likely to come to the region, GSTL is touting the Jobs Plan as an “organizing framework” for setting priorities to invest that cash.

St. Louis City is already in line to receive $517 million from the American Rescue Plan Act that Congress passed in March; St. Louis County and the state of Missouri will also receive money under the $1.9 trillion act.

The Biden administration has proposed further large spending packages, including the $2 trillion American Jobs Plan Act, which would fund infrastructure such as roads, energy and broadband, along with items including affordable housing, workforce development and manufacturing upgrades. The jobs plan bill must still make its way through Congress.

“What you would see (in the federal jobs plan) is dramatic investments in innovation, centers of excellence and the commercialization of research. St. Louis is well-primed for that, particularly in biosciences and geospatial,” Katz said.

“There are going to be significant investments between the colleges and skills providers and if you can connect them back to business demand – what corporations actually need in the upgrading of skills – you’ll be that much better off,” he added, mentioning emerging collaboratives in financial-services education in St. Louis as an example.

2. The updated STL 2030 plan backs off from some of the targets in the draft, such as the specific goal of creating 50,000 new jobs in St. Louis City’s urban core by 2030.

“We took out all the numbers just because the baseline is so difficult to track,” Katz said. “From a researcher’s perspective, we are about to see a level of (economic) disruption, post pandemic, across the country. To put out goals without some settling (of the economy) would not be fair.”

The updated plan also softens the language around the “STL Pledge.” This is a pledge GSTL wants employers to sign under which they’d agree to boost their efforts to hire locally, source goods locally, and locate a portion of their new jobs in the city’s core.

The update scrubs draft language that would have committed major employers “to set and attain clear targets” in these areas.

“The pledge is a broader piece,” said Valerie Patton, GSTL’s chief diversity, equity and inclusion officer, during the Zoom meeting with McPherson. “It’s about hiring and buying locally and regionally, but also about being very intentional around equity and inclusion. It’s much broader than one particular area.”

3. Speaking of equity and inclusion, those themes are still front and center in the jobs plan.

“How you do what you do matters,” Hall said during the Zoom meeting, referring to feedback his team gathered from government leaders, activist groups and social services organizations.

“The history of how civic things have gotten done in the past weighs on people. There’s this sense of people not knowing what’s going on, or not being included,” Hall added. “Our foreword [to the updated plan] reflects our view of how the business community needs to show up with a level of humility and listening in those dialogues.”

Katz noted that the plan includes an expanded definition of “inclusive growth” that goes beyond the usual talking points about affordable housing.

”In St. Louis it’s growth of quality jobs and the simultaneous reduction of racial and spatial disparities on income and wealth,” he said. “One of the qualitative goals we have put out there is an increase in the share of black workers with quality jobs. There’s a gap between white workers and black workers in St. Louis, as in other places. Closing that gap and outpacing peers is a critical goal. “

4. Now that it’s time to implement the plan, GSTL will be counting on hundreds of people around the metro area to step up.

Hall says one of the first priorities will be to get a number of “industry councils” up and running. Two examples of these industries are biomedical/health services and advanced manufacturing/production. Hall says each council could eventually have 40 or 50 members – an estimate he calls a “ballpark number based on what’s manageable.”

A second near-term priority is the Supply STL initiative, part of the STL Pledge, which Hall hopes will make supplier diversity and buying local a “calling card” for metro businesses.

A third priority: the Main Street STL initiative, which the plan bills as “the nation’s first metrowide effort to strengthen neighborhood business districts.” Specific main streets the plan mentions include downtown Washington, MO in Franklin County, downtown Alton, IL in Madison County, and the historic downtown of St. Charles.

5. Greater St. Louis Inc. is still a fairly small organization, but it will be growing – and it could develop a significant capacity for raising money.

Asked how much money GSTL will need in order to see its plans through, Hall shies away from providing a specific figure, noting that his organization operates primarily as an intermediary within the business community.

“We’re trying to drive investment to those mutually reinforcing strategies that get St. Louis to where it wants to be,” Hall said. “We will advocate, raise money, and do whatever we need to move these initiatives forward. But it’s very difficult to put a number on right now, in the way we typically think of fundraising. This is creating an agenda and pathways for capital, and I don’t want to create the impression that all those dollars run through Greater STL.”

GSTL has 28 full-time employees, which is about half the combined number its five predecessor organizations had a year ago.

“There was some restructuring in those groups last year,” Hall said. “The core capacity for an intermediary like this has got to grow. If you look at Indianapolis, it’s like 107 people and a $45 million budget. That’s far from where we are.”

Patton, who serves as head of the Greater St. Louis Foundation, the 501(c)(3) affiliate of GSTL, adds: “We have a three-year strategy for the foundation. We have not set a specific fundraising number for the foundation, but right now we use the 501(c)(3) to fund some initiatives such as foundation grants and tuition.”

6. On the fraught subject of police reform and steps by new St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones to cut funding for the city’s police department, GSTL hasn’t taken a position – at least not yet.

Recently Jones passed amendments to the proposed fiscal year 2022 city budget that would take $4 million from the police department and eliminate 98 vacant positions there. The money would be reallocated to priorities including affordable housing and support services for victims of crime. Jones says the move will not affect any current police officers, although critics say it’s the wrong move at a time when violent crime in the city is up from previous years.

GSTL has not been shy about weighing in on public policy decisions elsewhere, especially in Jefferson City. The organization has been sharply critical of state legislators who voted against funding needed to carry out a voter-approved expansion of Missouri’s Medicaid program. GSTL has also excoriated Missouri House members who want to ban transgender girls from playing on girls’ sports teams.

So what about policing in St. Louis?

“We have not gotten into that, and haven’t taken a position,” Hall said during the Zoom meeting. “Our policy work right now has been focused on the Medicaid expansion issues which were really critical. We’ve not jumped into local police reform.”

Does GSTL plan to?

“We’ve got a lot of things on the runway in front of us, so there’s no immediate action being taken on that,” Hall said of funding cuts for St. Louis police. “We’ll continue to monitor it, but right now we’ve got a lot on the jobs side that we need to get done.” –McP–

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