Tom Schumpert, executive director of the Rhode Island Economic Development
Corp-oration, is a likable guy. He looks you in the eye when he talks to you.
He listens when you have something to say. He’s easy with a laugh, a smile.
But that’s not why Sheldon, Myrth, Tony, Jim, Don, and Bernie should get to know him. They should get to know him because he’s got a knack for economic development.
Schumpert arrived at the RIEDC about a year-and-a-half ago, tapped for the important post by Gov. Lincoln Almond. The governor had been impressed by how Schumpert, as director of the Department of Business Regulation, handled the complicated Harvard Pilgrim health insurance mess.
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Schumpert worked long hours to resolve the Harvard Pilgrim dilemma. When he was done he had reached an agreement in principle with the state of Massachusetts on payment in full for service providers to members of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care.
Some believed Schumpert would have been lucky to get a fraction of the money he, and the state, was after. He got it all.
The RIEDC needed a lift. The quasi-state agency had been making headlines— the kind the governor did not like to read. There were pricey lunches, paid for on state credit cards. The political fallout cost John Swen, then-executive director, his job.
More than 100 resumes flowed into a search committee. One belonged to Schumpert.
The job seemed like a challenge. Born in Tupelo, Mississippi, the eldest of nine children, Schumpert liked the idea of a challenge.
So Almond handed him the reins of the RIEDC. His mission, to help existing Rhode Island companies create new jobs and to attract new companies to the Ocean State.
Under Schumpert’s watch, the agency has hit many singles, and its share of home runs. There has been perhaps no longer home run than that of Immunex Corporation’s decision last year to build a $500 million manufacturing plant in West Greenwich – a significant score for Rhode Island’s biotechnology industry. The firm will construct the world’s biggest cell culture manufacturing plant – a facility that will eventually employ hundreds.
But it is the many singles that make Schumpert so proud. The little victories. The attention, as he likes to call it, to the "low hanging fruit."
"As a commercial banker I learned very early on that you get more business by growing your existing portfolio than to be constantly trying to take it from somewhere else," Schumpert recently told Providence Business News. "So that’s the ‘low hanging fruit.’"
That’s why Schumpert is as excited talking about the agency’s Brownfields program, or its business incubators. Or his weekly breakfast visits to communities throughout the state, where he hears first hand from business owners and municipal officials. They may not capture the headlines the way an Immunex does, but they resurrect abandoned properties; they create jobs.
At Urban Ventures, a South Providence incubator, an Internet marketing firm, a clothing manufacturer and a cleaning service are just a few of the companies getting a start. Schumpert sees the program as a model – and a key cog in the state’s overall approach to economic development.
"Since I took the helm, the one thing I have advocated for is more small business development," he said. "Small business is the backbone of this state’s economy. There has been a lot of focus on affordable housing, but people can’t afford a house if they don’t have a job."
We all know how this works, of course. A new governor often means a clean sweep of present administrators. And come late November, if Tom Schumpert gets a feeling that his time in state service is winding down, he may well decide to go elsewhere. He may just find himself a new challenge. That would be too bad.
So here’s some free advice for the six gubernatorial candidates. Don’t wait until the limited weeks between Nov. 5 and January of 2003 to get to know Tom Schumpert. He just might help get your administration off to a good start.
