Can Louisiana compete with Texas? Become a tech hub? LED's new leader sees a way to do it.

When Susan Bonnett Bourgeois became the secretary of Louisiana Economic Development in January, her new boss, Gov. Jeff Landry, charged her not only with leading the state's economic development efforts but with taking an entirely new approach to attracting business and industry.

To that end, the Legislature passed a law in June that restructures LED and gives Bourgeois' office more autonomy, allowing her to reverse the denial of LED incentives in some circumstances and exempting her department from state purchasing requirements. The law also creates an advisory board of private sector executives to work with Bourgeois and mandates that LED create a strategic plan to guide economic growth in the state.

As that planning process gets underway, Bourgeois, who previously ran the North Shore Community Foundation, is traveling the state and trying to refute the notion that Louisiana is a difficult place to do business. She sees opportunities in energy and technology that can blend local know-how with natural advantages. 

In this week's Talking Business, she discusses her message and what's ahead. 

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Your mantra is that we need to "change the narrative" around Louisiana as a place to do business. How do you do that when we rank last in every quality of life outcome?

It has to happen on many fronts. We have a responsibility to tell the story of the opportunity — and there is absolutely opportunity. That is not a sales pitch.

Where is this opportunity?

One area is in highlighting our strengths, where we have them. For instance, Texas’ effective tax burden is high, though the perception is that it is low. We are the exact opposite. We complicate it, but at the end of the day, if you compare it with us, we come out ahead.

That is a great example of the narrative we can change and help people better understand the reality of doing business here.

But in Louisiana, we don’t get as much for our tax dollars as they do in Texas. Our school system, our health care system, our climate challenges. Those kinds of things matter to companies when they’re considering where to locate. What do you say to that?

Some of the criticism is real, yes, but some of it is narrative that you can counter. You look at individual school systems and we absolutely have bright spots. We need to tell those stories, even as we continue to focus on getting better. From a purely geographic perspective, there is a trade-off. The industries and companies that come to south Louisiana are going to accept the reality of our geography because the reality of our geography is probably the reason they are here in the first place.

What are your priorities as LED secretary?

In the next 90 days, we are doing a strategic plan. During the session, the Legislature passed a bill restructuring our department and that legislation created an advisory board of private sector representatives, whose primary responsibility is to ensure that the state has a strategic plan for economic development with accountability measures built into it. So, it doesn’t matter who the secretary is but there is a plan put together with stakeholder engagement and buy-in that follows best practices.

Who is doing this plan?

We are partnering with the Committee of 100 for Economic Development (which is made up of the CEOs of the state’s 100 biggest companies), who will help us hire a consulting firm. In an ideal world, I would like to hire the best in the business — a world-class firm that has done these studies for other states that are succeeding. But I also want them to partner with a local facilitator to make sure the right people are participating at the local level giving us feedback to inform what goes into the plan. At the end of the process, the plan will tell us what our real opportunity is.

But you already have a sense of where those opportunities are?

Yes. Louisiana has an energy opportunity, and it is ours to capitalize on and take advantage of and it is certainly not just traditional energy. We will remain an oil and gas state but there is also what I call the energy addition — not just a transition but an addition of more and more types of energy and we are uniquely positioned to take advantage of all of them.

There is global economic pressure driving this insistence on doing things clean. It is happening and will continue to happen, regardless of who is in the White House. When you look around and see the Shells and Exxons of the world investing in both traditional energy and new, cleaner renewables, that tells you there is room for both, and Louisiana has fundamental advantages that no one else has.

What are those advantages?

First, we have the carbon capture piece. We have the rocks, rules and movement. We have the perfect geology for sequestration — the rocks. We have primacy, or the rules — the right to approve our own wells. We also have the pipeline infrastructure in place — which enables the movement.

Second, we have an advantage in terms of our existing infrastructure — the refineries, the pipelines, the feedstocks, the transportation. Third, we have a generational workforce that knows this industry and this type of work and it comes with pride. It is the cultural overlay of the people. So, you put all that together and it is a huge opportunity. We could have a strategic plan that focuses on nothing but this.

Are there other areas where you want to focus?

The other area where, clearly, we have opportunity is in our grid capacity and the ability to add power generation easier than many other states. We have land and grid capacity. Those two things together make us very attractive to other industries, like data centers.

Louisiana as a place for data centers that hold the cloud?

Yes. Data centers are a great example of a blend between a blue-collar industry and tech.

We have relatively cheap power and a lot of land.

Not south Louisiana, with our climate vulnerability.

Unlikely south Louisiana. Definitely not below I-10. But central and north Louisiana have tremendous opportunity in that space. Northern Virginia, where a lot of data centers are located, is full, but the community college system in Virginia created a curriculum to train those people and Monty Sullivan at the Louisiana Community and Technical College System here is already saying, let’s talk to those people and find out how we can get ahead of the curve and train our workforce in central and north Louisiana.

Where are you on incentives like the Industrial Tax Exemption Program, which became so controversial early in John Bel Edwards’ administration, when he began to reform it and tie it to job creation and local control?

We are getting ready to do a strategic plan. So, I think it would make good sense to wait and develop an incentive program after we know what the priorities of the state are. If we have a strategic plan and have buy-in, then when we start developing policy to mirror it, we’ll have a much better chance of success. So, I am doing my best to remain neutral on incentives until after we see the plan.