Strengthening Wisconsin’s rapid-response program

CORE invests an additional $1 million in the Wisconsin Development Fund and allows grants to be made to research institutions.  The WDF is the state’s primary economic development tool and it has been successfully used to attract and retain businesses and retrain workers.   Since 2006, more than 50 awards from the fund have helped retain 6,500 jobs and create 3,400 jobs.  The fund has also provided needed start-up capital for entrepreneurs seeking to get their businesses off the ground. 

Recently, investments from the fund have resulted in a number of businesses moving to Wisconsin from out of state, including:

-     Flex Biomedical (Boston to Madison); Enzymatic Therapy Inc. (Utah to Green Bay); Inviragen (Fort Collins, CO to Madison); NanoMedex (Florida to Fitchburg); and, Exact Sciences corp. (Marlboro to Madison).

Other companies creating jobs in Wisconsin because of funding from the Wisconsin Development Fund include Gordon Foods in Kenosha, Actuant Corporation in Butler, Rexnord Industries in Cudahy, DeltaHawk in Racine, General Binding Corp in Pleasant Prairie and Flambeau Rivers Biofuels in Park Falls.

Old factories; new jobs

The C.O.R.E. Jobs Act includes $2 million in incentives to retrofit closed factories for green production or manufacturing.  These grants from the Commerce Department will create new jobs by bringing new technologies to idled factories.

Keeping American Jobs in America

Farmshoring is a development strategy that brings good jobs to rural areas of Wisconsin instead of sending them overseas.  The package implements that strategy by including $500,000 for grants to encourage companies to locate operational centers in rural areas of Wisconsin. 

For example, Sunil Krishnan, founder of Nambtech Solutions, is in the process of developing a software support center in rural Wisconsin similar to the kind he has previously managed in India; a grant from this program will help make that happen.

Tools to help businesses thrive

The bill provides information and support tools to help entrepreneurs create new jobs.  It provides a grant writer to help companies compete for federal Small Business Innovation and Research (SBIR) grants, and it creates the Wisconsin Business Intelligence System (WISBIS) to provide economic modeling data to regional economic development entities.   Wisconsin lags behind other states in drawing down federal money; an SBIR grant writer will help entrepreneurs be more competitive and fostering regional cooperation will lead to statewide job growth.