Wealth

West Virginia must fix policies that have hurt manufacturers

WEST Virginia's ruling Democratic Party has never gotten the hang of business. A significant majority has always viewed businesses with open hostility, of interest only to the extent to which they can be bled to yield taxes or benefits.

According to this school of thought, the more the state could wring out of businesses, the more swimmingly things were going.

The lunacy of this policy is now evident. The manufacturing employers that, along with mining, created wealth in West Virginia, are on the ropes. The pillars of the state's economic past - Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel, Weirton Steel, Century Aluminum, Special Metals, Carbide-Dow, FMC, Flexsys - are falling away.

State officials are clearly alarmed. As state Senate Finance Chairman Walt Helmick, D-Pocahontas, told a recent business gathering: "We live in a state with a $3 billion budget. We can't support that budget with the dwindling employment base that we have. We have our backs against the wall."

Hence, the legalization of gambling, and the panicky attempts of recent months to throw public money at attractions that might draw tourist dollars into the state.

But the needs of manufacturing, the creator of wealth and jobs that pay well, have never been addressed with the same attention.

The seventh annual Industries of the Future-West Virginia Symposium highlighted the problems:

n The chemical industry's share of gross national product has increased by 8.4 percent since 1995. Its share of the state's economic output has dropped by 47.3 percent in that time.

n The state's workers compensation program, overextended by billions, now costs AFG Industries, operator of the state's last flat glass plant, $2.80 an hour per employee - compared to 75 cents at the company's other locations.

n In only one of West Virginia's 55 counties do manufacturing jobs outnumber retailing jobs.

The implications of this trend for West Virginia's economic future are dire. State leaders need to address the needs of manufacturers specifically, quickly, to turn that trend around.

The state can subsidize all the amusements and attractions it wants, but until West Virginia fixes its attitude to manufacturers, it's whistling Dixie.

People can't spend money they don't make.