RGF research director Dowd Muska did some “on the ground” research recently in Florida which he discussed in a recent blog post. Dowd rightly focused on the State’s favorable policy climate and the various regulatory, tax, and education policies make Florida an extremely attractive location for people and businesses to locate.
Well, Dowd isn’t the only RGF employee to have visited the non-Washington swamp recently. As part of his travels, Paul Gessing was in Miami for a conference at which he met Gov. Rick Scott. During his presentation Scott urged all of us from the various states we represented to visit Florida, spend lots of money, and ultimately to consider relocating there.
He was engaging, spent time with each of us taking pictures, and I even got a personalized note from him in the mail a few weeks later. Another attendee from a cold, high-tax, state in the northeast mentioned that a business owner he knew had received a “cold call” from Gov. Scott urging him to move to Florida. The business owner said, “I can’t even get a meeting with my own Gov. and I’ve got Florida’s governor calling me out of the blue.”
It definitely helps to have the pro-business policies in place to back it up, but the enthusiasm and real desire to work to have businesses come to your state were obviously attractive features of Gov. Scott.
