Stitt shares priorities for upcoming year during Chamber’s State Spotlight

Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, left, and Sean Trauschke, chair of the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber, share a laugh during the Chamber's State Spotlight event held recently at Oklahoma Christian University.

One thing was clear for Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt during the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber’s State Spotlight held recently at Oklahoma Christian University: Education, workforce development and transportation infrastructure are high on his priority list this legislative session.

Stitt took to the stage in a fireside chat with Chamber Chair Sean Trauschke where they talked about the governor’s business priorities for the upcoming year.

Also appearing on stage during the hour-and-a-half program were Brent Kisling, executive director of the Oklahoma Dept. of Commerce, and Elizabeth Pollard, the state’s secretary of science and innovation. The pair, along with Chamber Vice Chair of Economic Development Kent Shortridge who served as moderator, briefly discussed business development, commerce, workforce and entrepreneurship in central Oklahoma.

Stitt expressed his desire for Oklahoma to be a top-ten state where people would want to live, work and raise a family. To make that happen, education must get better across Oklahoma, he said, which involves recruiting and retaining the very best teachers in Oklahoma and elsewhere. He noted the request this session for a $2,500 pay raise for teachers.

“We have to set the right culture and promote that culture because the magic happens when we have the best teachers in the classroom,” Stitt said.

Transforming Oklahoma into a top-ten state in education, he said, would also require the state to provide more opportunities for high school students who may not want to attend a college or university.

“I would love for every single kid go to higher ed, but that is just not reality,” Stitt said, emphasizing the importance of the state’s CareerTech system and developing specialty high schools such as the Oklahoma Aviation Academy in Norman, Okla.

“When you are a junior in high school, if you want to become an aviation mechanic or want to become a pilot, you can go to this specialty high school in Norman,” Stitt said.

Norman School District officials envision that the academy will grow significantly over the next four to five years, serving as many as 600 students annually. Norman voters recently approved a $354 million school bond issue, which included $32 million for a new facility to house the academy.

“I think it’s pretty simple that we need our higher education or CareerTech or common ed looking at the jobs of tomorrow, working with industries and then designing their programs to build around those needs,” Stitt said.

Stitt also stressed that transportation infrastructure plays a huge role if Oklahoma is going to achieve top-ten status nationally, specifically the completion of ACCESS (Advancing and Connecting Communities and Economies Safely Statewide) Oklahoma, the 15-year, $5 billion plan to develop a highly effective and viable state turnpike system. The plan includes widening Turner Turnpike to six lanes all the way from Oklahoma City to Tulsa as well as constructing various outer loops around the Oklahoma City metro. Under the ACCESS Oklahoma Plan, Stitt said Oklahoma should have 100 miles of reconstructed roads and 53 miles of new roads by 2037.

“The big picture here is staying ahead of the curve and making sure our commute times are a competitive advantage for Oklahoma versus the 45-minute commute times that you have in Dallas-Fort Worth right now,” he said.

During the later discussions focused on workforce development, Kisling said his agency has been working on a talent attraction campaign over the last two years that would include renting billboard space in Orange County, Calif. and in the Bay Area of northern California, as well as in Chicago and Washington state, the biggest states currently for net migration into Oklahoma.

“We asked for $20 million this year for the campaign. Ten million of that would be for us to go tell our story. The other $10 million would be a partnership with businesses across the state to help offset relocation expenses for a legacy company here in the state to try and bring in that new CFO or that new senior engineer from another state,” Kisling said