(00:00:00) Mr. Chuck Slocum. Welcome. Well, thank you Bob. The Minnesota Business Partnership is 10 years old and will be noting that anniversary at its annual meeting tomorrow night. The partnership is a lobbying and research group comprised of more than 70 chief executive officers from Minnesota's largest companies, the executive director of The Business Partnership for the past three years has been Chuck Slocum and he's with us today to answer questions about what the partnership's goals are and what it has been doing Chuck to begin with. Can you tell us what makes the Minnesota Business Partnership different from any other business lobbying organization? I think the best way to tell that story Bob is to look back on the history of the group about ten years ago a dozen or so chief executive officers from the larger companies led by Judson Bemis of Bemis company and candidate and of Dayton Hudson Corporation and Jim McFarland of General Mills and Don McCarthy of NSP. Together and they said, you know, Minnesota has been a good state for us and for our companies and we've been successful here, but we really feel like we don't know much about what's going on in the capital and with our Governors and that we maybe have something to contribute that we have not yet here that we heretofore have not been able to do and at the same time we were doing this in Minnesota California chief executive officers are reaching a similar conclusion in so in 1977 two groups partnership Round Table type chief executive officer groups of larger companies were were born and what makes them unique is that the Business Partnership is not a member if you and I had a company and wanted to join your not necessarily we're not able to join you're invited to join. It's very much dependent on your willingness to contribute personally to the ongoing research activities. The partnership like other groups is a research think tank. We have a staff. Then we access Talent from each of these major companies, you know in Minnesota we have over 40 companies that are in the Fortune 500 those companies are about four times as many as we should have based on our population if we were a typical States and we've been very successful in in creating some big successful companies in several different Industries, and we're able through the partnership to pool that talent and to help state policymakers. So the first part is the research and the personal involvement of our members the second part is that our members then take this research and spend a good bit of time talking to state legislators Commissioners members of the governor's cabinet to the governors and other elected officials on our view for the long term in Minnesota what we can do today to continue to build and grow and we've seen over the last 10 years some interesting improvements in in several measures that the partnership values regarding the state the partnership. Ordered with with how many members and has grown to about 75, isn't it? No, yes, I think tomorrow we're going to elect for five new members. So we'll be up nearly 80 members started with a dozen people and they then picked the 50/50 or so folks that got together in September of 1977 to build the partnership and slowly we've we've grown but the the measure Bob is if you have a company that's a hundred and fifty million dollars in revenue and has a thousand Minnesota employees. Then you tend to be someone that we would we would look at and of course we have almost all of those in the state are members of the partnership. You mentioned this just sort of in passing a second or two ago. But what do the CEOs themselves actually do with the Business Partnership? I mean, they obviously lend their name to the organization and so that but do these guys actually sit down and do some talking themselves and some writing and so on. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. We we have an executive committee of about 14 that meets monthly but we Of task forces are working groups not unlike other organizations that focus in on issues and their six or eight other chief executive officers and get together and they meet then we access deputies who also do some of that work with us and for us and we have quarterly board meetings, which we have 40 or 50 chief executive officers together. I get as much out of the by play and the the pre and the post meeting discussions as I do during the actual meetings, but no it's a personal Hands-On responsibility to participate the present chairman. The outgoing chairman is George Dixon of First Bank systems and George. George was highly organized and he had us do a report card on involvement member involvement and that they want to have fun someday you deal with your bosses and kind of measure their activity and part of that study looked at six or seven things. We asked our members to do personally and we found that I think 70 69 or 70 of the 75 really met all that. We asked him to do and about half of the Workers were doing more than we asked him to do. So there's a real Spirit of citizenship. I think among and Civic contributions among the partnership members as there is among their their employees and their corporations and where the beneficiary of that the important thing of course is the issues that the Business Partnership deals with and we can get into a discussion of that here, but I want to give out the phone number so that if you have a question for Chuck Slocum, you can call us and we'll put you on the air with him in the Twin Cities the phone number two two seven six thousand 2276 thousand elsewhere within Minnesota one 865 to 970018 hundred six, five two nine seven zero zero and by the way, Chuck are there some members of The Business Partnership from outside the Minneapolis st. Paul area. Oh, yeah sure we have several but as you know, most of the major companies are located here. So most of our members are from the Twin City metropolitan area where American Crystal sugar out of Moorhead tomorrow the CEO of that company Jack roll. Who's the CEO of Duluth? So wouldn't you know what? I've it's out of my mind. I hope no one in Duluth is is listening right now. Minnesota Power in Duluth is a member. Larry austere wise IBM in Rochester is a member. We have several members whose companies are not headquartered in Minnesota, but who have enormous Minnesota interests. For example, IBM Rochester has four five thousand employees and an enormous investment in the state and Larry us wise is authorized to act as a chief executive officer in Minnesota. So he's a member I think we have five or six that are not members. We have somebody on the line already with the question. Let's take that caller. Hello. (00:06:48) Hello. Could you tell me what the considering the importance and the emergence of the Business Partnership? How many of the members are women or is a strictly an all male voice? (00:06:58) It is strictly an all male voice due solely to the fact that there are no chief executive officers of these larger companies at this point that our women we had looked at a woman year or two ago that ran a major company and she retired about the time we invited her to join. So we got her mail successor and that is a it's an interesting observation men men tend to run these bigger companies. And so the people I work with are men though. We have a number of Staff people and deputies and Consultants, of course that our women. All right, two to seven six thousand is the number if you have a question for Chuck Slocum executive director of the Minnesota Business Partnership, let's get out of talk about some of the issues. The partnership is involved with Chuck first of all, government spending and taxes. That's always a major concern everywhere. It seems we do a good bit of work asking our members to tell us what they think is important and in the Business Partnership the fiscal policy issues tend to rise to the top although I find Fair amount of interest in education and the courts and Civil Justice and employment laws and working with organized labor and but fiscal seems to be the major one. And one of the things that our group tries to do is share research that is irrefutable or research that that is done with the full cooperation of government policy makers and we share the results of that research in a bipartisan way to with Democrats and Republicans and we have conducted such a look at the state budget over the 10 years that the partnership has been most actively involved in policy making and found out that if you look at the Consumer Price Index as a measure of growth in our state budget as the that our increases in state and in state spending have been almost 60 percent more than the Consumer pricing in increase would have been during those years. So Minnesota does have an appetite for State Services now to be sure we share a lot of that money with local governments 85 percent of the dollars. That are raised in Minnesota through our sales tax and income tax and excise taxes go back to local units of government to fund activities as well. But Minnesota has for a long time under bipartisan political leadership had an appetite for government services and programs and projects that has tended to concern us because that means that our taxes tend to fall high in virtually every category and in order to pay for government. We also have an enormously I think on a system and I think that business people are trying to say as we look to the Future let us limit that growth in spending to something closer than the than the Consumer Price Index or the rate of inflation and perhaps try to keep a low it for a period of time and then we're going to be able to level off our citizens ability to pay with the with the taxpayer burdens because we raised the average Minnesotan for example earns at about the 14th or 15th highest income level of the 50 states, but our tax burdens are at about the sixth highest level in on one of the Goals would be to match those two numbers. All right, we have some more folks with questions for Chuck Slocum. Let's put another caller on the air with him. (00:10:05) Hello. Hello. Yes. Go ahead. Please good afternoon, Business Partnership might be represented as a management voice and public policy. Could you identify for us? What areas where the partnership might agree with say organized labor or some of the other groups that occasionally business has an adversarial relationship with (00:10:25) oh, yeah one just jumps right out. It's a good question. I'll tell you the quality of people in Minnesota is Directly related to the success of this state and so I think organized labor has a concern about our schools as does the partnership. We have a concern about ongoing training retraining we have tens of thousands of Minnesota workers in any given decade that are displaced that whose jobs are no longer productively integrated into the workforce and we have to figure out ways as does organized labor to train and retrain those workers so that they're they're living in the right place with the right kind of skills. You know, one of Minnesota's competitive advantages in my view is the quality of our people and I think you'll find labor and business people agreeing on that and and how we structure our system to keep our Workforce as modern and as productive as possible is of course of mutual interest with business and labor. We we have a respectful relationship with organized labor in a state and it's one that we'll continue to work on. I think it's better now than it has been in the last two or three. Here's another question or four chunks will come on the telephone. Hello? (00:11:38) Yes. Okay. Now I'm my memory is really fuzzy on this but it seems to me at the waning days of the legislature. There was some news about a involvement between this governor and his people and the organization of that. Mr. Slocum is a part of as far as the compromise tax program was concerned. And so I'd like to first of all ask about the propriety of it in view of the fact that I thought it was something that was practically arrived at over a weekend and just almost to the close of the legislative session. The next thing is perhaps he could comment on the fact that if if my recollection is correct, it also did obviously didn't involve the other trade group of that's represented by mr. Borden and whether the fact that to business Group seem to be competing doesn't represent some kind of a divisiveness as far as the unified voice of business as far as the legislative program is (00:12:44) concerned. All right, chucklehead, we've issued about 25 policy papers and task force reports on various issues and during the last session in 87. I believe we issued seven or eight directly to the tax conferees to the administration to the 201 legislators on many aspects of the the state budget and on tax policy. In fact for the first time in 87, we prepared a response to a total response to the governor's proposals on taxes and spending that's an area of expertise and an area of consuming interest to the partnership and there's no question that 90% of what the partnership does is in private. It's working with legislators. It's working with the governor. It's working with the Commissioners and there may be some some reference that you're thinking about regarding. That we had an influence at the edges. We didn't feel we were particularly successful in 1987. But but we did support Governor purposes initiatives to simplify our income tax system. We did support the efforts to build more local accountability into our property tax system and to make that a more simple system we did support efforts and we have supported efforts to expand the state's sales tax to to include clothing to better balance our system. We felt that Minnesota has two long been dependent on the income tax as our primary revenue source, and that that's caused some instability the roller coaster effect. I suspect what the caller is talking about though is our work on unemployment compensation which was which was and has been and continues to be a very thorny issue in which labor and business have not often found common ground and we've been apart for many years and in 1980 85 and 86 a coalition of business groups of which the partnership in the Minnesota Chamber where a part we're successful in passing a bill that Governor vetoed in 86 and in 1987 the partnership and other groups met with commissioner Samardzija with Danny Gustafson the president of the AFL-CIO and late in the session after I was more than a weekend, but after a couple of weeks of work in which it was all pretty private and quiet the governor took had asked us to address a compromise Bill we did so in private and that bill then was laid on the legislature in past in record time and it was a controversial bill at the process itself did not lend itself to democracy at all. The partnership did support that initiative and I believe we were the only business organization that publicly supported it but I might add that 59,000 Minnesota employers received an in unemployment compensation tax reduction as part of that package and we did lend a great deal more stability to our system through through some mechanisms that we built into the new law and but it but it clearly wasn't a reflection of what the partnership or other business groups were see On the other hand, it was under the circumstances a far more preferable option than than the others that existed in our view. So that lends itself to the third point about Unity. I guess business is no more unified than than radio station. People are or than busy then labor people are then sports fans are and I think that there are literally scores of business groups out. There are group tends to focus on on larger Company CEO activity and on policy issues that are of long-range nature. We tend not to be involved in self interest legislation Allah banking or manufacturing or high-tech kinds of business agendas. So there's room for plenty and there's room for plenty more as long as you deal with your work with integrity and we do work together well with a lot of groups, but I don't think there's any single voice for business. I know that when boarding in the Minnesota Chamber has the largest organization and we work together on many things, but there's the Independent Business. Persons Association and and many many others the retail Federation and and others plenty of room for all of us to try to clarify our thinking and work on on how Minnesota is the job climate can be improved. There are there's a fairly widely held perception that of the business groups the chamber the Minnesota Chamber is perhaps the more feisty of the to as compared to the Business Partnership and so on is that an approach that you have consciously tried to take and if so high believe me, it's not a conscious strategy. I think that the Minnesota Chamber has five to six thousand members, they're spread throughout the state. They're in every legislative district in the state the Minnesota Chamber by by virtue of that large membership has scores of issues that it works on because every member has an interest in certain pieces of legislation and the Chamber tries to be responsive. The chamber does most of its work through a professional staff of a very good people that work in the It isn't work one-on-one with legislators. And the Chamber of Lee of recent years has been much more anxious to mobilize the business Community throughout the state to be aware of and to be involved in solving some business climate problems and issues. And so therefore some of the some of the comments and about being feisty and strident and Cetera come up because but believe me when business people speak to lawmakers with with the same message all over the state to 200 one of them. It does it does make the legislature stand up and pay some notice. The partnership is is different. I mean our members think differently and they do their work differently, but we are not incompatible and we try to work together the Business Partnership cannot possibly address. The many issues that the chamber does and it far prefers to work on a one-on-one basis in private if possible. Although we speak out on issues to publicly as much as we can and I don't consider it a problem. The I think that minnesotans are better off because of it and I think the lawmakers are better off because of it today's guest is Chuck Slocum executive director of the Minnesota Business Partnership, which is observing its 10th anniversary at its annual meeting tomorrow night. We have some folks on the line with questions and we also have some lines available in Minneapolis Saint Paul to to 76 thousand elsewhere within the state 1 800 600 to 900 70020 free. Yes. May we have your question, please? (00:19:02) Yes. Just out of curiosity what your three largest members are of Corporations. And also if you happen to have any data on the percent of new jobs in your membership, since you're going mainly with companies that are thousand members and above. (00:19:23) I'm not sure. I got the last question sir. Can you (00:19:26) basically the new jobs with the perpetrator ministration? They've been talking about bringing more jobs in a Minnesota and through the news media. It's mainly been proposed that they're mainly small business jobs and I'm curious to know what percentage of those new jobs that he's been talking about are in your member Industries. (00:19:48) Okay. Let me answer your first question. That's an easier one for me. We the largest companies in Minnesota in terms of revenues. And in terms of employment are Super Value date and Hudson 3M and Honeywell Control Data has slipped some though. They would be up there in the top five or six as well. And those companies are multi-billion dollar companies. I believe honeywell's 5 or 6 billion and I believe the date and Hudson is 10 or 11 billion 3M. I think has more employees. I think they have over 20,000 employees date and Hudson has over 20,000 employees in the state. So these are enormous National. National and international firms one of the one of the windows that I enjoy is appreciating learning a bit about those companies and how they succeed and also getting to know the chief executive officers the people that sit in the hot seat in each one of those companies how they sort things out but that I think answers your first question regarding new jobs, Minnesota has four five or six years had job growth and we're very pleased with that job growth. The governor is right that most of that job growth comes with with companies of a hundred or less employees. Most of it is coming in the Suburban parts of the Twin City area in manufacturing strangely enough a lot of companies, excuse me, a lot of states do not have the kind of manufacturing strength that Minnesota has sustained about a third of our Workforce is manufacturing oriented. The rest is service and other kinds of workers. We're concerned that Minnesota is job growth rate is less than the national average. You know, we're very proud that Minnesota is a strong economy that it has over a hundred thousand employers that it has four times as many Fortune 500 It companies as as we would if there was some sort of formula for that but we are concerned at the rate of job growth while these companies are healthy. Our research shows that three out of every four new jobs that they invest in are going somewhere else in the country or the world and only about one out of every four is actually staying in Minnesota. So we'd like to see that we'd like to see Minnesota attract and retain more and better jobs and most of those new jobs. I think we'll continue to come in the under 100 companies of a two million or less in Revenue all the way down to very very small companies. Although we estimate about 40% of the job growth will be in larger companies with 500 or more employers and employees. And then on the other hand you have a big company like 3M closing some plants in Minnesota and moving to Texas is that is that an indication that the job or the the climate just is not very positive for big companies in Well, I think we should clarify that 3M has largely not closed plants 3M has relocated or develop new business initiatives that could have been developed in Minnesota. They've developed those elsewhere in Texas and in California. Primarily California now is the second largest state for 3M Minnesota Mining manufacturing has very large California contingency and they appear to be moving some of their more attractive new businesses to California, which is of concern, of course to our economy and to the people that live and work here. Yeah, I would say that that our business climate in general whether you're small or large is one that we've got to work on. We've got to work on on corporate taxes. We got to work on commercial industrial taxes. We've got to work on the fiscal side of things. We've got to have a smoother relationships and employment law and cetera but one of the things that has concerned the Business Partnership in the last year particularly has been the willingness of this legislature to come up with legislation that It exempts small companies companies have 20 or fewer or a hundred or fewer employees or of a certain revenue and fewer course the business The Business Partnership companies are much much larger than that and the idea being sort of well, it's a good idea. But if you're a small company, we're not going to have you do it. We happen to think that many of those ideas Place Minnesota at a competitive disadvantage to from other states where our companies could grow and that's one of the reasons we think that the job growth in Minnesota hasn't been as strong as it could be. We have an enormous base and enormously good business infrastructure and public infrastructure to grow in we think our people are good. But if we don't make ourselves competitive on costs companies will continue to grow elsewhere. It's about half past the hour move on to your question now. Hello (00:24:08) there. Hello, you mentioned that one of the issues of the partnership was education and I teach Business program at Concordia College and st. Paul and I'm just curious today. If you have a message for business faculty and business students. State from the (00:24:23) partnership. Well, I wouldn't presume to have a message for professionals that are teaching in our students. We do have an interest. Our expertise is much more in the in the K-12 area five years ago. We started studying Minnesota's K-12 education system. There are over 700,000 public school students in our in our system and in 1984. We released a report called the Minnesota plan or the Berman Wyler plan and it's been widely debated within the education community and within the business community and that report basically called for it was a call to Excellence in terms of improving the quality of Education in Minnesota and the accountability that education we called for Core Curriculum development that Minnesota students should have Mastery learning in math and in science and social studies and communication skills. We called for professionalism in the teaching ranks and changing the way we structure teaching to allow for more. Ready to allow teachers that are good teachers to do that to hire adjunct teachers and teaching assistants and Master Teachers. We called for testing and better measurement with with a 6 billion dollar investment in in public education in Minnesota. We really don't know how well we're doing in terms of the 432 school districts or in terms of Minnesota as compared to other states or we don't have a good sense of that Minnesota does quite well. We think but we think we ought to be measuring that better. We think that we should have more choice for students and parents in the system and we've been a leader in the efforts to provide more options. Minnesota has done a good job in the last couple of years we've responded and there is more choice for the consumer in Minnesota as far as which schools to choose to go to we wanted to reform school governance, and we wanted to take a look at education finance and it was a literally hundreds of pages of research done and we've been working on that and continue to work on that through our education quality task force that the Dave coach of Graco now heads though the idea initially came from Layer of 3M or it's a sort of thing that probably won't be all put in place for many many years to come if indeed then well and that's been generally the Partnerships methodology. This was a 10-year plan. We've had progress against our ideas. We've also kind of backed off somewhere ID ideas that weren't quite as workable as we'd hoped but generally speaking the reform movement is Alive and Well in Minnesota people in this state care about the quality of the education that kids are getting and they know it's more than just dollars. Minnesota is and has been high and its per capita Aid to public education we support that of course, but we also think that we have groped we're going to have to put generally more accountability into the system and we're going to have to put more measurement into the system moving onto another person with a question. Hello there Chuck Slocum is listening. (00:27:15) I'd like to know what part the partnership played in the anti-takeover legislation recently passed at the Minnesota Legislature what you think of that act and what you think of Method by which it was achieved. (00:27:27) Okay. I'll start with the last first. I think that Minnesota unlike not unlike many other states responded to a good corporate citizen in distress. And I think that that that was appropriate date and Hudson was a was involved in a hostile takeover. The rumors were Rife and as has happened in too many instances in the past, we've had these Financial manipulators I guess is a word that I'd use that have have been successful in in taking over companies that that are otherwise responsible and profitable and I think Dayton's Hudson was a good candidate. So the legislature had the courage to take on that issue of course date and Hudson had to take the lead in that and and and sorting it out. We did homework independent a date in Hudson and concluded based on Research done in New Mark in Indiana that in fact the state of Minnesota did have a right to set the standards around which corporate control issues were regulated. We'd rather have the state do that then the federal government and that Minnesota was appropriate in responding. We also develop five or six principles. I don't happen to have the report with me that we shared with legislators and we did testify in support of those principles. And as I recall the legislation that was passed it met all but one of them is far as our own thinking on the issue and so we were generally supportive of the legislative response. We believe that the state sought to manage corporate control issues. But in no way do we think that takeovers that that the state ought to be taking sides on takeovers 90% or more of all takeovers are friendly takeovers companies are distressed or a larger company finds it attractive to grow in a certain kind of business and they're able to financially negotiate a deal with with a smaller company to become a part of the larger company. I used to work in that Gary at Honeywell doing Acquisitions and divestitures. So I have some sort of a Hands-On knowledge of it and we don't think state or federal law have to be taking sides in that but what Minnesota did was was I believe in the best interests of minnesota-based Corporations. And so don't incidentally there only a few hundred minnesota-based corporations date and Hudson 3M happen to be two of them that are actually Incorporated in the state the vast majority of publicly held companies in Minnesota are Incorporated in Delaware. So this law does not affect them at all, but I think it sent a signal that that we value our corporate citizenship here. And if you're going to come to Minnesota in a takeover effort off of Wall Street, you'd better be prepared to say what you're doing earlier than you have to say in other states and you better be prepared to be serious about running those companies and not just by up the company and sell it off and pieces to pay off the debt. So I think I made myself clear on that particular issue Chuck Slocum is with us executive director of the Minnesota Business Partnership, which Celebrating its 10th anniversary this week. We have more folks with questions. And if you would like to put one to Chuck you can call us in the Twin Cities 2276 thousand or elsewhere within the state one 865 to 9700. We do have a few lines available still and you're on with him now. Go ahead. Please (00:30:43) one of my big disappointments and being a senior citizen isn't by property taxes continue to rise didn't we have a lot one time or some kind of assurance that those taxes would be Frozen at age 65 or was that just politicians promise that was never put into into practice. (00:31:02) We had a law such a law Minnesota's property taxes for farms. And for homes are at about the national average. They are not excessive when compared to other states. We had decided I recall in the early 70s. When I worked in the state senate George Pillsbury saying, you know, my mother doesn't need her. Texas Frozen she ought to be able to pay for a house on brackets Point. There's a certain amount of logic to that that I think that if we're going to be freezing property taxes and and providing necessary relief that we ought to do it based on not only age, but probably an agent an income basis we have that through the circuit breaker at this time property taxes are not an area that that that I have enormous credibility or experience on but I can tell you that that Minnesota has among the most complicated property tax systems in the country. We've made efforts to simplify it in 1987 that we're going to phase in an 88 and 89 that may make it make more sense. But when we do surveys on how people feel about government and taxes we've seen some interesting Trends one, is that property taxes if it's not number one, it's number two. It generally is number two in terms of the tax that people hate to pay the most. What's number one income taxes are number one and fire in a way about 80 to 90% Percent of our people say income tax are number one and then property taxes and then interestingly enough sales tax has become less objectionable, but still 50 to 60 percent of us don't like sales taxes either. So another thing we found in this survey work is that people for the first time are linking these taxes was spending for a long time the public supported as do the politicians generally. Well, let's spend more money to do good things and that's what politicians get elected for and that's what government is all about. Well now the people are willing to understand that perhaps the rate of growth in spending the new spending that we want to do ought to be ought to be more conservative it ought to be more prudent in the way. We manage ourselves Force the system to make more choices. So if we want to put a whole lot more money in a good cause we're going to have to wring it out of other parts of our budget so we can limit that rate of growth and so people are linking this these tax burdens whether their property taxes or sales taxes or income taxes with state and local Permits pending. We will move onto another listener then go ahead please you're on with Chuck Slocum (00:33:31) sir. I thank you very much for your answers to my questions about the anti-takeover legislation. I have a follow-up question about two years ago or perhaps a little longer. There was a Green Beret or activity on the part of an Eastern artery organization without much substantiation on scientific computers. And in fact, they paid a half a million dollars in greenmail. I heard of no activity and their behalf at that time. Were you aware of that? (00:33:58) I'm generally aware of the greenmail phenomenon business has been hard-pressed to get involved. I think in eliminating greenmail because what is one person's tender offer is another person's greenmail sometimes but I think that I think the business community and government leaders in general are more willing to look at that. I frankly think greenmail and some of this activity oriented toward corporate takeover has hurt business in terms of its credibility with the public and you know, it's not the corporate Executives. It's certainly not the Business Partnership members that suffer when when there's takeovers because virtually all of them have what they call Golden parachutes and they have fairly favorable treatment regarding losing their jobs. It's the tens of thousands of people that work in these plants and that are working productively and that are making a profit for the for the shareholders the tend to pay the price and we're going to have to redefine and get into it more and I guess I guess greenmail is one of those areas that depending on your definition and where you're coming from that it probably will be a part of a debate in the future. We have no plans as the partnership to be involved in such a debate in the next year or two though a circumstances may require that we rethink that we have about 20 minutes left with Chuck Slocum and fair number of people with questions for him will move right along to you then. Hello. (00:35:29) Hello picking up on the Partnerships 1984 educational reform approach and the fact that half of the taxes paid go to support education. I wondered if the partnership has a timetable of sorts as to when the 700,000 students will have their achievement improved as a result of that program for example, ten percent in 1990 15% in 1991 and so on. (00:36:02) Well, we think that by 1995 Minnesota has a good chance of having the very best public education K12 public education system in the country and that our test scores will reflect that and that are other measures will reflect that our whole plan was premised on a phased-in 10-year strengthening of Education performance and accountability as far as any given year since we don't have uniform measures between states and incense even with in Minnesota. We don't have a uniform measure that is irrefutable regarding the performance of our students. It's very hard for me to say, but I can tell you that there has been a 20-year erosion of performance and math and science that Minnesota students are not as strong in those areas generally as they once as they once were in the 60s and I can tell you that we have seen in the last 19. 6 for example, we saw a slight Improvement while the nation went one way toward more mediocrity, Minnesota had a slight Improvement math and science. So there are some encouraging signs with college-bound students and we think Minnesota is in and out standing position to take the leadership in assuring its residents that the kids that we send off to our public schools are going to get the very best education and frankly. We really don't know if where we rank today, but we're doing pretty well and we always have another thing that comes out in our survey work with the public is that the public is willing to support two things before they support tax cuts. And that is number one. We're willing to support providing its well providing that the money is well spent we're willing to support more money into education to educate our young and that is by age group and by demographics grandparents from rural parts of the state are willing to do it as well as suburban young families with kids in the system and the second Is there willing to support more money for roads, we value roads, so it's education and Roads and then it's tax cuts. Well, well they go along with an increase in the gas tax. Well, I haven't surveyed on that and I'd leave commissioner Levine to comment moving on to your question, please for Chuck Slocum. Hello (00:38:21) there. Yes. Hello. I wonder some organizations that are pro-business notably the Minnesota Association of Commerce and Industry have a record that is perceived by the public as anti-environment. Can you differentiate your organization from those kinds of groups and tell us something about what you have done to be a leader in terms of positive action for the environment. (00:38:41) Thank you. I wish I could tell you that we've done a lot. We have to find a compatibility between A safe secure and clean environment and jobs in the Business Partnership to the extent that we've been involved in that it has been more on the research side. Minnesota's great strengths are its natural resources its water and it's it's tourism and it's just the Beauty and The Wonder of the state is something we must preserve for our children and grandchildren. One of the things that we're trying to do is work with environmental groups and with government policy makers to really get at this whole issue of hazardous waste disposal tens of thousands of hazardous waste materials are improperly disposed of every year in Minnesota and it's not business that's doing most of it. It's we as consumers it's those of us who throw a bucket of paint down a drain and that ends up contaminating eventually a groundwater Supply its Farmers that put pesticides and pesticide. Excuse me. It's Farmers to put fertilizers and pesticides on their properties. They get washed into lakes that in the lakes are choked off its it's to a certain extent acid rain that comes Then that is of course caused in large part by utilities that provide Power for our homes and offices and in understanding that issue. I think that that's one that we've planted on too often. I think that Minnesota ought to be able to take care of its hazardous wastes right now, for example larger companies that are closely regulated on hazardous waste disposal largely send their hazardous waste the either Indiana or Illinois in carloads train car loads. It's very costly and it's silly. I mean, we can't expect the people of Indiana, Illinois to take care of our waists. I think we ought to figure out how to do it here. It's one environmental groups have been less anxious than we'd like to work with the business community and government in finding a safe place which we can either recycle. Or permanently and safely store hazardous waste we have the ground formations that suggests that we'd be able to do that. Now, I separate hazardous waste from radioactive contaminated radioactive waste which is something minnesotans are not anxious to have stored in Minnesota. And nor our people from most other states, but I do think that the high level or the hazardous waste of the nature that I'm talking about by not my not finding a place to store those wastes. We are going to shortchange ourselves on jobs. I could give you two companies right now that are members of The Business Partnership that are phasing all manufacturing operations in Factory operations out of Minnesota not because of the cost of doing business, but because they can't they can't afford the cost of of taking care and disposing of their hazardous waste in the state. All right moving on to another questioner for Chuck's welcome. Hello (00:41:29) there. I would like to reaffirm your comments on takeovers and also ask you a Question about the regulation over a hundred thousand Airline employees lost their jobs in the direct relation process and some of those that are were left hand their salaries cut by as much as 50% which reduces the taxes that are available. I think that there has been a terrible price paid for low fares bad and unsafe service. Is there anything that can be done to temper or change the directly Latorre process in this country? (00:42:09) I think that's a whole nother discussion with the whole nother Guest The Carter Administration really promoted first Airline and other deregulation in the Reagan Administration has picked up on that and generally speaking the business Community has supported deregulation or less involvement of government in the hands on control of businesses. And I guess I would just reiterate that often deregulation or too often it shortchanges employees or consumers who buy products and services and consumers ought to use the leverage they have is purchasers of goods and services to see that they get the best possible deal for the dollar that they're spending and I guess that's about all I have to offer on it. Right? Well we take just a brief pause here, but for another call Let me ask you Chuck. I understand that at the annual meeting tomorrow. You're going to set forth your priorities for 1988 for the legislative session in 88. You want to give us a little preview of that. Well sure I'd be happy to we briefed the governor's cabinet today and we've been meeting with the legislative leadership and I'm not going to get real specific. But Mike Wright who is the CEO of super value is going to be elected our chairman. And as Mike takes that position. I think you can expect that. He's going to focus on some ways in which long term we can limit the growth of State spending and in some very specific ways. Minnesota is going to have to address that issue. We also expect that literally the the state's economy is so healthy right now that literally hundreds of millions of dollars in excess of the budgeted eleven point four billion dollar two-year budget will be available. We think that that we ought to look hard at funding the reserve that Minnesota minnesotans deserve more stability in their system and that the first the first put on that money. Be to put it in the bank and have it as a reserve in the event that we have more fluctuations. How big a reserve we're going to support moving the reserve to about 550 million dollars on this eleven point four billion dollar budget which is which is an adequate Reserve. It's not an excessive reserve and it's not inconsistent with the kind of Reserve that most of the companies have in this in this state. Secondly, we're going to urge that we take a final look at income taxes. We've brought down those income tax burdens from over 200 percent of the national average to about a hundred and forty percent of the national average. We've taken a 14 classification income tax system. That's very complicated with lots of preferential treatments. We've made it much more simple and we're thinking that the last chapter of the income tax debate the place that we have to go is to reduce those rates for everybody to 5% and 7% a to rate structure. It will cost for six months. It will cost the treasury of the state about a hundred eighty million dollars, but then going into the next 18 excuse me, 1989-90 one biennium. We will have a 5 and 7% rate. We think that that would put Minnesota their income taxes at about their ability to pay those income taxes or at about a hundred and twenty percent of the national average, which is where income is you think you can do that and have a 550 million dollar. Yeah. We think that the reserve is going to be hundreds of millions of dollars right now by the end of the year now now that's all subject to assessment beyond the Partnerships control. But right now we're confident that those two things should be highest on the agenda on the fiscal side. We're also committing to working with organized labor in a continuing way on on workers compensation, which is an important service and important legislation for people that work here in the state that get hurt and we want to it is the highest employer paid tax in the state. We're interested, of course in a cost-effective way to better manage that and I think labor is interested in having a more efficient way to process Injured Workers. Through the system so that they have their their compensation quicker. We're going to work with labor to I think on a dislocated worker strategy at least Minnesota is well prepared to deal with dislocated workers that lose their work through no fault of their own. We will oppose we will work on the way our courts work particularly the way the system responds to business litigation. We will urge that litigation be solved between businesses when possible but that we look at the way the court system works and and liability provisions and state law and then we will work very hard on the testing Provisions in education. Those are the basic messages that will that will talk about in more detail and that will be working one-on-one on what these legislators in the next few months. All right. We have a little less than 10 minutes left with Chuck Slocum. We can put you on the air with him at to 276 thousand in the Minneapolis st. Paul area one 865 to 9700 elsewhere with in Minnesota. If you just joined us Chuck Slocum is executive director of the Minnesota Business Partnership with This week this year I should say is noting its 10th anniversary. Yes, please your question today. Hello there. Yeah, go ahead. (00:47:17) Yes. I was kind of interested in mr. Slocum's comments there, but I think the main thing that I wanted to ask was he's interested obviously and in increasing Minnesota business and it must be difficult for him working under a governor that spent half his time running around the world trying to get business and then didn't come to the World Trade Center even for the opening of the Trade Center. (00:47:48) Well on my comments on that. I must say the governor governor purpose does have a real gut commitment to jobs. I mean, he really believes in that and and we in the partnership have worked with him. We don't always agree with all of the ideas and cetera but as Governor the state he's more than capable of speaking for himself, and I'm not I'm not about to second-guess his decisions on World Trade Center visits or not. We're hoping he comes to our meeting tomorrow. Jerk. You have been around government and politics for an awful long time. Would you care to evaluate the governor's performance during his current term in office? Well, I'll just look back on 1977 when Rudy perpich first became governor and I think you and I knew each other then and then during the years that elk. We was governor which were some real Rowley roller coaster Rocky times. I think the state is better positioned in a competitive way today than it was 10 years ago. I think primarily that's because Have reduced income tax burdens 44 2.2 million income taxpayers in the state and I think that makes us more attractive for job growth. I think that we've been Innovative in a number of ways beyond that in the way, we raise our money to fund state and local government. I think we've got a system that's a little more stable and a little better than it was before. I think that we've done all this while maintaining a consistently High commitment to Education Health Corrections welfare, we've got a lot more to do strengthening the hand the local government and what we do in the future is something that we should concentrate on. Our population is relatively stable. We've only added about twenty five thousand people a year in each of the last ten years. So our population went from just under 4 million to just over 4.2 million. I think now in Minnesota and the migration of people to the Twin Cities continues, we're at about 50% of the people in the seven-county metro area and another 50% that live The 80 greater Minnesota counties, but in the Twin Cities we have now the 16th largest metropolitan area in the country. So I guess I would say over the last decade that Minnesota has improved at the margin its ability to be a good place to grow and start businesses and we're looking for further progress in the next 10 years. How much credit would you give to really perfect for that? Well, I think you give credit to people that serve I'd give credit to both Governor purpose and Governor Qui for for stewardship and management and to the legislators it serve and I'm not about I think to point out that it's all Republicans that do good or bad are all Democrats to do good and bad. I'm a Republican and a longtime Republican and and appreciate people that serve and work in government Affairs as you recall years ago. I used to be a little more critical a little Partisan in my comments, but the Business Partnership is said Chuck Slocum. You should be bipartisan and you should work with people because what we want our results and that's what our organization is going to look for. Let's take a few more questions if we can hear you're very close to the end of the hour. Hello Chuck slocum's listening. (00:51:03) Yes. I have a question regarding coming by the Minnesota anti-takeover I'm here. Organizations like Dayton's and 3 a.m. Because they were Minnesota corporations. Now was my understanding that when three of them changed its name in the 70s from Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing 23, M. It really incorporated as a Delaware Corporation does mr. Slocum. Is he aware of this (00:51:34) if they did I'm unaware of it. My understanding is that that 3M is a minnesota-based corporation, but they you may be right. I'd have to check it out. I think my point was that relatively few of our hundred thousand Employers in Minnesota are actually Incorporated in Minnesota Dayton Hudson happening happening to be one of them and these publicly held companies that are Incorporated in Minnesota will will benefit somewhat from the the anti-takeover statutes that were past. All right, and we've got time for one more and it's you go ahead please. (00:52:08) Thank you. I'm an employee of one of the companies. That's a member of your Association. And I recognize that your Association is only open to CEOs or Executives. But do you have any advisory committees or any other vehicle for employees of these companies to have input on the policy issues that are pending before your Association? Thank you. (00:52:27) Yeah, that's a good question and we do but it depends on the the company what we do is we we work with deputies on various issues often though their Senior Management deputies. For example on fiscal policy were able to access very good people with experience in property tax and in income tax areas that advise and counsel with the with the with the companies with whom they work and in some companies they do a pretty good job when we start to take the temperature on issues that the Business Partnership would be looking at they do a pretty good job of reaching down through the public affairs departments and through the occasionally into the employee newsletters and employee Publications departments sharing some of our ideas, but we don't have a mechanism absolutely in place. Because our members frankly are the CEO is my bosses are the chief executive officers, but some of them are more creative than others in involving people beyond their own top Management in what the partnership is about Chuck in about a minute or so one final question for you. Do you think this is a very broad sort of a thing but to boil it down. Do you think that business and government are natural antagonists? I think businesses government have a lot more in common than they have to be antagonistic about but I guess I would be candid and say yeah, I think I think there's something about the process that you know business is always going to say you're trying to take too much from me and you're trying to make life too difficult for me and I bet you that's true in Texas and Wyoming and every place else just as it is here, but I think in Minnesota, we have a public spiritedness on both the part of elected officials and business folks that really transcends some of that and we're able to say hey when it's all said and done government's was anxious to say we want your companies to succeed. We want you to hire people and we want them to have good jobs and we want them to stay here and business people are going to say, hey, we really do appreciate this state and and the quality that and the honesty and integrity of the state and so while will always be antagonists I think will always respect each other and the partnership tries to emphasize a good bit. The the mutual interests we have and treat people with respect and frankly. We've been treated with respect. Is that all right, sir? Thank you very much for coming in and visiting with us today Chuck Slocum executive director of the Minnesota Business Partnership. It will take note of its 10th anniversary during its annual meeting tomorrow night in the Twin Cities. Remember, please that the bork confirmation hearings resume at 1:30 this afternoon. They're carrying live in the Minneapolis st. Paul area on ksjn 1330 AM today's broadcast of midday made possible by Ka re news 11. This is Bob Potter speaking. It is going to rain in the Twin Cities area for the next couple of days 70% chance of rain today and tonight and a 60% chance tomorrow. It's also going to be rather cool high today around 70 low tonight in the upper 50s in the high tomorrow in the upper 60s. This is ksjn Minneapolis st. Paul where the time is 1:00 p.m.