>>"One Detroit" is on Mackinac Island for the "2022 Policy Conference."

The agenda to move Michigan forward from the main stage speakers to backroom conversation, this special one hour starts right now >>From Delta faucets (light music) to Behr paint.

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(light music) >>The key to reducing crime is not to arrest people and lock them up.

It's to change decisions.

>>I'm also trying very hard to find a means by which we can...

When I say we, I mean, those of us particularly in television journalism, can regain your trust.

>>There was never a once upon a time in American history, and there's never gonna be a happily ever after >>The American transportation and infrastructure sector now has a level of federal support that we haven't seen in most of our lifetimes.

>>For me it is the single most bipartisan thing that I've worked on in my three and a half years in Congress.

>>Tough times call for tough people and through everything the world has thrown at us, we've gotten a lot done.

(indistinct chattering) >>Decision makers and thought leaders on Mackinac island for the '22 Policy Conference.

Welcome to the parlor of the Grand Hotel.

I'm Christy McDonald, founding managing editor of One Detroit and back for our coverage of the Detroit Regional Chamber's Mackinac Policy Conference.

It's 12th year bringing this event to you.

So coming up on this special one hour of One Detroit, you'll hear from Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan on development, plus governor Gretchen Whitmer on state spending, then the future of infrastructure from U.S. Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg.

Also conversations on making Michigan more competitive, diversity in the workplace and getting things done in Washington with our congressional delegation.

It's a good time to take stock of where Michigan stands right now.

We're reemerging from two years of a pandemic with billions of dollars to spend on infrastructure, education and an economic investment plan to attract business to the state.

It's also a contentious election year with midterms in D.C. and the state's top executive jobs up for grabs.

We start with the economy and jobs.

Michigan has experienced 11 straight months of job growth.

Unemployment is down to 4.5%, but employers are still looking to fill jobs.

The "Great Resignation" has people reassessing how they want to work.

And inflation is straining household budgets.

>>We have a very stable geographic and climate in this region which is only going to get better.

And again, of course, the world's best access to fresh water.

And eventually water is going to supplant oil as the world's most precious resource.

And that is something we need to be thinking about as we attract talent to this region >>Michigan is working to be the place for investment, and state business leaders are stressing the need for a long-term cohesive plan.

>>Site development.

So we don't have shovel-ready sites in the same way that many states around the country and particularly in the south do.

Incentives.

A lot of times we put an incentive in place, and a few years later we change our mind and pull it back.

That lack of consistency, that lack of certainty kills us every time because no one can plan on it.

>>And education is closely tied to economic development success.

Specifically the pipeline of high school graduates to college in the state, and funding to offset the cost of higher education.

A more skilled workforce leads to more corporate investment in Michigan.

>>The governor's "Sixty by 30" goal, to have 60% of Michigan residents with a industry recognized degree or credential really set the bar high.

In Oakland County, County Executive Dave Coulter set the "Oakland80" goal, an ambitious goal to have 80% of Oakland County residents with that certificate or degree.

>>That trickles down to K-12.

Michigan ranks 41st in the nation for high school graduation rates.

Kids are dealing with pandemic learning loss and teachers are considering other professions.

>>It's not a desirable field like it used to be.

There's just too many other options that they can make a lot more money and have a lot less headaches.

>>COVID is far from over, but we're learning how to adjust with the reality of more variants.

Over 5 billion federal dollars in COVID relief, now in the hands of the legislature and the governor.

>>When you have enduring money, money that's coming in through higher tax revenue, economic growth, and from the cuts that were made during the pandemic when we thought revenue would drop off a cliff.

And then there is the one-time money, the billions of dollars in COVID relief money.

It's important to keep those in two separate piles.

>>The big question that remains is whether the legislature, which is of course controlled by Republicans, who don't seem automatically opposed to these things but have their own list of things that they'd like to do.

How do you reconcile those things in an election year and whether you can get that through?

>>In Detroit, Mike Duggan is in his third term as mayor.

Large development projects continue Downtown, and there's focus on small business owners finding the needed investment >>We see through COVID-19, when it came to disbursement of capital into marginalized and underserved environment, it was tough to connect with black-owned businesses.

We see that technical assistance is still a major impediment towards capital getting to black-owned firms.

>>The 2020 census showed population loss in Detroit.

And while the city is challenging that, more work needs to be done to bridge the gap in economic opportunity for the city's residents.

>>The only jobs that have been growing in Detroit are low-wage jobs, for jobs in Detroit.

The jobs in the region are middle-wage jobs.

Now you could say, well, a low-wage job is better than no job, but if those are the only jobs that are growing, then that's gonna be problematic for everyone.

>>We will get to the politics of the election year and agreeing on how Michigan should move forward in just a bit.

But we are starting with Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, and how he uses this policy conference to show business leaders and the rest of the state where Detroit stands with investment, neighborhoods and growth.

>>We were just at the White House because Detroit is down so far this year, it's the end of May, 20% in homicides and shootings from a year ago, we stand out in the country.

Every chief in America's talking to us.

Now, Chief White, doesn't like me talking about this 'cause summer's coming and nobody declares victory before summer's coming.

But the fact is, the steps that this department has taken to get people to make different decisions is making a difference.

And if we can build on it and the courts are being cooperative, Prosecutor Worthy is being cooperative.

Dawn Ison in the U.S. Attorney's Office has been phenomenal in this strategy.

It's gonna get better and better.

I really feel that.

And I feel that the way this chief has this department going, we're gonna be okay.

>>Yeah.

This is I guess, a bigger picture question, Mr. Mayor, and it's it's about how much we can rely on policing to solve our crime problem and how much has to be policing in concert with or other things instead of policing, how does that fit together?

>>So you're absolutely right.

So my first year here, you had DTE and GM, and a few people running summer jobs programs.

We got them all together with the help of a number of foundations.

We now have what JP Morgan has called "The finest summer jobs program in America."

8,000 young people.

The first year we went to 8,000 young people in summer jobs, shootings dropped over the summer.

Is that coincidence or is that not?

I think opportunity is a very significant thing.

The second thing that Harvard did research on, is that the areas that were filled with blight and abandoned houses had higher degrees of shooting.

The places where we cleared out the abandoned houses saw reductions in crime.

Of course, we've landed things like 5,000 good paying jobs at the Jeep plant, 2000 more at the General Motors plant, we've got folks employed.

And so you've gotta do two things at once.

One is, you have to have a path where people feel there is a a prospect for their own success.

That's within the right side of the law.

And these individuals are making risk/reward decisions, it is amazing how precise as you talk to them.

And I spend time with gang members as the Chief does, they're making very conscious risk/reward decisions, and what we have to do, and this is what the Chief's a big proponent of is, make it very difficult for you to succeed in committing a crime with a gun, and make it much easier for you to succeed in another way.

And literally everything we do all day is planning how to change those incentives and disincentives.

>>Yeah.

Some of these criminals are smart.

I mean, if they did something else for a living they would be very successful business people.

They just choose to break the law.

So they're using innovation and technology to not be arrested.

And so our strategy focuses on really the key areas that we're struggling with, or what's struggling with.

Not that we're declaring victory by any means, but we've had some some degree of success.

And one of the things is crowd control and crowd management.

When I walked in last year, we had an uptick of 44% in nonfatal shootings.

And that was a problem.

And we knew that people are bringing guns to areas where people congregate.

They would have very simple conflict, resolve it with a gun.

You bump into me, you step on my shoes, I'm gonna shoot you.

Impulse decision making.

So what we decided to do was to look at those areas, pinpoint where the high likelihood were in our communities and deploy in those communities where there was a likelihood of the behavior happening.

We had some success with that.

We took a lot of guns off the street, but again, with the courts being closed, it's a turnstile.

They go into the court system, many of them get a tether, they walk right out the door and engage in similar behavior.

So we were able to do some things >>With me now, our One Detroit contributors and longtime opinion makers in Michigan, Nolan Finley the editorial page editor of the Detroit News, Stephen Henderson, host of American Black Journal.

We are back on Mackinac and it feels like kind of full speed, doesn't it?

>>(Nolan indistinct) >>Yeah?

>>Yeah.

And so the crowd's a little thinner but everyone is so excited to be here and (indistinct) actually seeing people in 3D, that there's a lot of energy.

>>Beautiful weather.

>>Yeah.

>>The weather's been great.

>>It's gorgeous up here.

>>It's never like this.

>>Yeah.

One of the things that people are talking about that I wanna focus on first is the City of Detroit, and where we are coming out of the last two years, looking at tax base and looking at...

It's the state's largest city and (indistinct) Detroit.

So kind of waves along with the rest of the state.

Nolan, what are your thoughts right now?

>>Well, I mean, it's exactly where we should be focused because coming into the pandemic, we all know where Detroit was.

It was on a roll and everybody was excited about what's going on Downtown and into the neighborhoods.

The pandemic kicked that in the backside.

Nobody's really certain what the next iteration is gonna be.

How we'll evolve out of this pandemic, and what Detroit's gonna look like, say over the next five years.

Will it need as much office space as it has now?

Without the office space can it support the restaurants and entertainment venues and will it be able to draw the the residents Downtown and out into the neighborhoods if fewer people are working in this city?

Those are big questions that we need to pursue.

>>Yeah.

And as there's affordable housing if people can afford to buy in Downtown?

Stephen, what do you think?

>>I mean, when you go out into the neighborhoods, I think you really see the effects of the pandemic and the way it drew back the curtain on the kind of poverty that people were existing in before.

And as in some cases much worse now.

I keep coming back to this recent study that shows the number of people who are paying half their income to live, just to rent someplace in Detroit.

I mean, these are problems on a scale that it's hard to imagine what you do to move the needle.

And we've been really focused on discreet kinds of policy change in housing and job opportunity, and things like that.

But we still have this kind of irrational market that we all live in, in the city.

For where from top to bottom things don't make sense the way they do other places.

I asked the mayor about it this morning, about this bigger context that all of this fits into.

And he said, "You're right.

We need big moves and big change "to affect that.

"But even the $800 million that's coming in "from the federal government is really not enough "to reset those things the way they need to be."

>>And some of that's one time spending, Nolan.

>>And I asked to mayor about it yesterday morning, when I had a sit down with him and he says, he's committed to spending that money on projects that'll bring generational change, if you just piddle it away here, there and everywhere.

This once in a lifetime windfall is gonna be gone.

So he says, he's looking for projects that have a 20 year impact.

And I think that's essential to do.

He was also very excited about this partnership between the "Ilitch Organization" and Stephen Ross, the real estate developer, to bring the U of M Innovation Center into the district in Detroit.

He thinks that's gonna have a huge impact in attracting really major corporations to Detroit, to put operations here, companies we haven't seen before.

>>Operations here, but then that goes to the next thing, is the talent, making sure that we have the talent there to fill the jobs that are going to come, and looking at the availability though of some of those middle-wage jobs that we've talked about, Stephen, that are not the low-wage, the entry level, but maybe don't require a four year degree because you're looking at the population of the city where 85% do not have a degree over high school.

>>Yeah.

So I mean, one of the key developments in that area over the last couple of years has been the construction of this Carpenter's Training Center in the neighborhood where I was born in fact.

This is a four year course that takes you from nothing to a journeyman carpenter or a millwright.

The opportunity for that for Detroiters cannot be overstated, right?

This is an opportunity for young people to aim themselves toward.

It's also an opportunity for older people who missed out on other kinds of job training opportunities.

And this is for a lifetime, you get that card and you're a journeyman carpenter.

That's a lot of money that you are entitled to go and make and do these middle-skill jobs for the rest of your life.

>>Yeah, it's a different trajectory, but it does make us look at the future of work here, Nolan.

In the last minute we have left.

>>It absolutely does.

In a lot of ways, we're in the same place we were two years ago before the pandemic, generating a lot of opportunity now in the region, as we were before.

Not enough people prepared to exploit those opportunities.

And so, we still suffer from what is a inadequate education system across the state.

And if Michigan...

If you look at the workplaces of the future and the highly skilled workers we're gonna need.

I mean, we're still talking about the same issues.

We've gotta move past the conversation and get things done in terms of training our folks to succeed in the future.

>>Yeah, and having a cohesive plan.

All right.

Also, you can't have a Mackinac policy conference without a little bit of politics thrown in.

It's a (indistinct) killer here.

We're gonna talk about that coming up a little later on in the show, so stay with me.

But when we talk about the future of work, what Nolan was talking about in jobs, Michigan's success will depend on growing our population as well.

Making the state an attractive place to do business like have affordable living and good education.

Businesses will also look at incentives and a trained workforce.

>>From your perspective, Doug, is Michigan competitive?

And if not, why not?

>>So I think we have a larger role to play particularly in the new jobs, the new economy of technology, innovation so forth, than we actually get credit for.

People don't generally think in tech, of Michigan essentially as a growth state.

I think it's evidenced by the fact that we have not actually grown our population and so forth, but another (indistinct) actually think of auto actually as a tech industry, which actually is.

The big challenge though is that as the World Economic Forum, they just had a report on the future of jobs.

There's 75 million jobs that will be displaced by technology, with 133 million new jobs being created that are digital.

And we have to fight harder for the jobs that remain in manufacturing.

Our manufacturing levels are back up, but with a third less jobs.

And in some cases, like in EV as many of you know, it takes 30% less labor to actually develop.

So we had to fight harder for not just the jobs that we have, but for the jobs of the future.

And those really are driven by technology innovation.

>>We have to worry about K-12, and when you look at where we stand in the state of Michigan, let's not go global right now.

Let's just stay in the United States of America.

We are 33rd in the eighth grade math scores, 39th in fourth grade reading.

We're 41st in high school graduation.

We have to invest in our children for the jobs of the future and we have to have them graduate and give them a path for jobs that will be available.

But people aren't gonna come to this state when they look at those statistics and they don't have the talent here.

>>As a relatively new transplant to Michigan I had never thought about coming to Michigan for tourism or livelihood prior to coming.

And I came for a job and I'm still here six years later and I love it and I'm here on stage, so thank you for having me.

But the thing that we are missing is there's not a one size fits all solution, right?

There's many different populations of talent.

Some of whom come here for two or four years for university and then some of whom leave, people that grew up here and went through the K-12 school system and then moved along or others like Doug and I that grew up somewhere else and would stay.

So you can't have a one size fits all solution, but people want a lot of the same things.

They want to have a good life.

They want to have a good job.

They want to have mobility.

They want leisure activities.

And those are things that we have parts of but we need to create a vision of the life that they could have that enables them to come join us.

>>We've got a long way to go.

You know, Jeff Donofrio at lunch talked about, you know, where is our common shared vision of where our economy's going, what our industry needs, and how are we mapping to that, right?

How are we mapping the skills of tomorrow that our industry of tomorrow where we have competitive advantages, you know, what are we mapping to that, right?

How do we, you know, ensure that, A, we make the state more attractive for, you know, especially young talented people and how do we then communicate that to people?

And then finally the sense of urgency and, you know, all of our friends, John Ricolta, has really been pushing on this, which is, you know, we need a sense of urgency.

We need action.

You know, not soon but sooner than soon.

And he's talking about a commission or, you know, and maybe that's the right idea, but whatever we need to do we need to do something robustly.

We need to do something big and we need to do it quickly and it needs to be in a bipartisan way.

>>So I'm grateful to be sitting on stage with leaders like this, being here at a conf lab we have some of the best minds globally that are thinking about how to change the marketplace, whether it's healthcare, whether it's research chemicals, financial services, mobility, you name it.

So gratitude is to see for more so we can't lose perspective on what we have.

The second thing are two things that my dad told me.

You have to be your own best critic.

You have to be relentlessly objective, but you also be your own best cheerleader.

We are very good at being the critic.

We must celebrate what we have here.

Think about the fact that Dow continues to make investments here in Midland Michigan.

Think about what Tina and her team are doing at BHSF system.

They could be doing other things, but they continue to invest in Michigan.

We continue to be able to keep Sandy here when every chamber, every organization in the world, is trying to recruit here.

People want to be in Michigan.

>>Businesses are looking for a high concentration of workers with college degrees.

Here in Michigan we are in the bottom third of states when it comes to the workforce having a degree beyond high school.

Jobs of the future will require those degrees, but the cost of higher ed is rising.

>>This is not just for the sake of education and for getting a degree, right?

This is about competitiveness.

This is about our future economy and what it's gonna look like because we know that top states in the country with the best economies, the most resilient economies to recession, are those that have the most educated workforce.

So we have to help people be able to get into college.

So programs like the reconnect that Tennessee actually, you know, pursued first, where you get anybody who doesn't have a college diploma who's over the age of 25 and you give them a tuition free pathway to a community college to get that degree to start on their pathway to a four year.

Those are really critical that we have those programs in place for decades to be able to raise our education rate.

Programs that help remove barriers too, because it's not just getting into college, it's completing college.

And some of the worst debt we have is for those individuals who've never actually completed that degree because they don't get the benefit of having put that money in place and investing in themselves.

So all the ways that we can get more people into college and into apprenticeship programs, because the construction and skill trades industry is, you know, has as many talent gaps as any.

>>Yeah and so tell me what some of the business leaders are telling you about filling jobs and the jobs that they have because you represent some of the most powerful people in this state in saying, look, we still can't fill these positions.

>>We think you do a quarterly economic survey of our CEOs and we have 94 board members who are CEOs at the largest employers in Michigan.

87% of them say they're gonna have trouble filling jobs the next six to 12 months.

And they focus really on the fact that there are not enough applicants.

So they're just not getting enough people coming in the door, and that those applicants that they do have have skills gaps.

They don't have the education that they're looking for.

They don't have the resources, the credentials.

And again, we can do things right now with this one time money to accelerate and close those gaps and accelerate our path to being a more educated state and a more competitive state.

>>The Policy Conference is always a place for the governor of the state to show progress and to push for what's next.

Governor Gretchen Whitmer used that opportunity to talk policies and state spending.

This is a big platform for her since she is up for reelection.

>>Today, there's so much good work going on all across our state.

In factories, where batteries are forged, to laboratories where breakthroughs are made, universities where the next generation is incubating ideas that will define our future, classrooms where students are finding their voices and developing their passions, in the dreams of every hardworking Michigander.

We've got so much potential and promise but we need century defining goals to coalesce around and shoot for.

Here's what I'm thinking.

First, our shared prosperity.

In the 21st century Michigan will electrify the world and become the manufacturing hub of the future.

From batteries and life sciences to electric vehicles and software, Michigan can become the epicenter of innovation.

From our biggest manufacturers to countless small and medium sized firms, Michiganders will find ample opportunities in 2100 to apply their talents in good paying high, skilled jobs.

Second, place.

This beautiful place we call home.

We are the great lake state and with that honor comes an awesome responsibility In the 21st century Michigan will go to the mat for the great lakes.

We're home to 21% of the world's fresh surface water and we are the envy of every other state.

We will protect that water and remain a bastion of bountiful, natural resources, especially as climate change continues impacting the global supply of clean drinking water.

And finally, our people.

Much of our 20th century success was rooted in our ability to attract and retain families from across the country and around the world, to bring their talents to Michigan.

At our best we're a beacon for people who want the basics.

A good paying job, great schools, clean air and water.

A chance to get ahead and hope for the future.

The 21st century, that must be our final essential goal.

Create a great quality of life, maintain a good middle class cost of living.

That means building the best public schools to prepare our kids for the economy of the future and achieving our 60 by 30 goal to have 60% of Michiganders with a post-secondary certificate or degree by 2030.

In just over three years we've gone from 45% to almost 50% already.

We are making great strides.

And in the decades ahead, let's go farther.

90 by 60 has a nice ring to it.

Someone really loves that.

All right, good.

(audience applauding) It also means replacing our lead service lines and ensuring every Michigander has high speed internet.

Means more of the things that define Michigan's vibrant culture, parks, craft breweries, Carhart's continued domination of style, and high profile global events from trade shows to sporting events that put the spotlight on our extraordinary state.

These are goals that transcend one, two, three, 10 administrations.

They will be the result of decades of grit and determination.

That's my vision.

>>One of the big draws of the Policy Conference is the ability to bring in national thought leaders who inspire.

I had the chance to interview presidential historian John Meacham on the main stage about the state of our democracy, legendary news anchor Ted Coppel gave a keynote speech this week as well.

And conference chair and vice chairman of the Detroit Pistons Arn Tellem had a great conversation with Steve Ballmer, owner of the LA Clippers, and US Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg spoke about infrastructure.

>>I feel this great sense of Renaissance, no pun intended, in Detroit and in the area.

And that makes me really happy.

I know it's hard to be a big comeback effort but I'm so pleased to see Detroit coming back.

>>One of the things I wanted to ask you about that was when you graduated college, before you ended up at Microsoft, did you consider coming back to Detroit and working here?

>>I did.

Absolutely.

I worked a couple years, went back to Stanford, to business school and was trying to decide kind of what to do between summer of first year and summer of second year.

And the then president of Ford, Don Peterson, had gone to Stanford Business School.

So I sent him a note and said, can I talk to you over Christmas?

I'm curious about the auto industry.

So I was talking to him about potentially coming back to work at Ford for that summer between first and second year.

And then I got a call from a buddy of mine from college, Bill Gates, and it detoured me some off of the Ford Motor Company route that I was considering.

I remembered Nancy and I had dinner with you in Los Angeles right after you took ownership of the Clippers and it was a fascinating dinner.

You talked about your goals in this next chapter of your life was one of obviously building a successful basketball team, but you had many other personal goals.

And one of them was philanthropy and you and Connie founded the Ballmer Group a year later, I think, in 2015.

Talk about that, how that came to be.

>>As we thought about what to do the thing building on what Connie had already done and my interests.

There are people who have, and I'll just call it, no real shot at the American dream from the day they're born.

And it's not because who they are or what their capabilities are but by the circumstances of their birth whether it's dysfunctional family issues or lack of good education, it's just not possible.

And there's plenty of data that supports that.

And that's not fair, at least in my estimation.

I don't know how the world solves poverty or some of these other issues, but everybody, every kid deserves a chance and we decided that would be what we focused in on and that's what came under this rubric of economic mobility which is as broad as you can think.

I mean, we are a mile wide and an inch deep.

We view that as our strategic value.

And why philanthropy?

Look, we were blessed with a lot financially.

Things worked out great at Microsoft and it would be, you know, in a sense, irresponsible if we hadn't picked something of this ilk to go do.

There's a couple new areas that we're considering but were anchored in this notion of giving every kid a shot.

>>10 years ago we might have been hard pressed to describe the transportation of the world of today.

I'm not sure we understood what what Lyft and Uber were gonna become.

I'm not sure we saw how quickly the automakers were gonna try to adapt to the electrification of their fleets.

Tell me a little bit about, if you close your eyes and think about what our transportation works world looks like 10 years from now, what do you see?

>>Well, first, we should approach any predictions with a lot of humility for the reasons you just raised.

Think about one of the lessons of Uber and Lyft, for all the transportation technology that's been developed in the last 10, 20, 30 years, the most important piece of transportation technology of the last decade isn't even a piece of transportation equipment.

It's a phone, right?

That's what actually changed everything from how you board an airplane to how you summon a ride.

And so there's a big unknown factor about some of the changes, but there are some that we can see.

Electrification is gonna accelerate and I think it's only gonna become more important.

The OEMs have made big bets on this and we need to do it as a country in order to meet our climate goals and in order to make sure that American workers on American soil get the benefit of this electric revolution.

And so we are investing $7.5 billion in charging stations and we've also proposed measures to make those EVs more affordable so that more families can realize the gas savings that come with owning one.

So we know electrification is gonna matter.

We know automation is going to develop in some very fast moving, well, let me put an as asterisk on that, fast moving but we don't know when some of the fastest movements will happen.

Again, we need some humility here.

As somebody who started following this issue as a mayor it feels sometimes as if widespread use of automated vehicles is exactly 10 years away and it's been exactly 10 years away for 10 years.

And so again, some humility is called for.

>>Extraordinary thing that happens.

>>But what we do know is we need to update our regulatory frameworks to keep up.

Interestingly there's actually no federal regulation that says you have to have a driver in a car because nobody ever thought of that.

But also if we're writing a safety standard for a driverless car right now, it says what the airbag should look like in the passenger seat and in the driver's seat.

So we're updating even just the language of our most basic regulations.

There's a lot of interest in Congress right now on a framework for how we handle automation, not so much to create it.

That's what industry's gotta do.

Again, the private sector has its role.

But our role is to make sure that it's safe.

And by the way the potential for safety improvements from automation is colossal in a country where human drivers are killing 40,000 people a year.

Should be up in arms about that.

>>But how will insurance work if I'm willing to turn my car over to the system?

Who wears the liability?

>>Yes, that's one of the biggest issues that we've gotta work through.

>>Business leaders across the state are talking about the strength of having a diverse workforce and ensuring the future of women in the workplace post-pandemic.

>>When I think about workforce equity it's really a three-pronged issue.

So the first is if you're doing it right, then number one, it's good for the economy.

Jason, to your point, the talent then is able to access all the opportunities that are gonna be coming here and that are already here both for the state as well as for the city of Detroit specifically.

If we've got all these new businesses coming, if construction is happening but we don't have people to execute that work then it just won't happen.

So it's key for the economy, certainly.

The second is that it's good for business.

We already know the ROI of diversity.

That diversity of thought, diversity of experience, as well as our cultural diversity, adds to increased innovation which in today's business landscape is critical to be able to execute all sorts of things.

I know GM can appreciate that.

And then lastly, of course, it's good for people.

As a state, we know we've got issues with poverty.

We have people, what is called ALICE, right?

So they're essentially the working poor.

They have money but they still just can't make it through.

And so having additional opportunities for them to have jobs, good jobs, means that it steadies families across the entire state.

And so we would then transform not only individual lives but our economy as a whole.

>>When you talk about workforce equity, equity leads to economic growth, which leads to health and wellness in our communities and that's what makes it so critical when you talk about putting the effort into those initiatives that close the economic gaps.

So when you look at it and I'm gonna talk more, 'cause I agree with everything you said, talk more about some of the challenges.

When you think about the talent and focusing on the talent and you're talking about closing this equity gap, I think some of the challenges around the education, and when I say education I'm talking about awareness and how we make people aware of what opportunities exist whether we educate them by degree or by skill, and then when you look at it through the lens of really preparing them to be successful for opportunities.

And then when you look at it through the lens, really closing that gap, it comes down to how we really wrap our arms around nurturing them through the process.

>>When you think on a neighborhood level you think about the fact that the smallest businesses in our communities are the ones that define the identities of our neighborhoods, the store on the corner, the coffee spot, the restaurant that you might frequent, whatever.

Like these are the places that define our neighborhoods, and so one of the things really important is that those types of businesses have a pathway to even have a chance of being successful.

And part of success for a business, there's an equation that involves, like, do I have the capital for this to be successful?

Do I have the people, do I have the infrastructure to make sure?

And so at the state level, the Governor and I are trying to create the conditions for all the elements of that equation to be available to people, and to a broad range of people who either are or have the potential to be business owners.

>>I think during the pandemic I think it had the biggest impact on women.

There was a requirement of being at home and it all fell on women's shoulders.

Now, the question is, is how do you bring them back again?

And it's, and what I've seen, there are a lot of women who either are, during that period of time started really reevaluating what they want to do.

And it's, there's a silver lining to that period of time where you really had the opportunity to reevaluate, if it was really the job you wanted to be in, whether you wanted to work more at home, since that was also a possibility.

So I actually think that this is really kind of one of the most exciting times right now, because the way in which people are working have changed, due to technology.

Depending on your skill set, you can really, really design the kind of job that you want.

And for others, I think there's a greater opportunity.

And certainly what we're trying to do at BasBlue is really present and offer up programming, people who can inspire others and give guidance to those who are looking for a new path.

Well, it's been rather crazy as anyone might suggest.

I am a warehouser.

I am a just-in-time warehouser at my company for all goods and services that are required for the OEM.

And I'm responsible for the quality, I'm responsible for maintaining the inventory, which brings you into the issues that were in our face with this pandemic.

I buy a lot of product offshore and my container costs went from 5,000 to 25,000.

Take it or leave it.

And my customers are saying, take it.

And so when you run a business you really have to be aware of your finances, the needs, what needs to happen, and you have to rise to the occasion and figure it out.

>>On average we have fewer diverse employees in the field.

In the office, it's no different than this geography.

I think it's 25 to 35 percent are women.

But what we're doing though, is encouraging particularly young women to get involved in the skill trades.

We've got the Tree Trim Academy in the City of Detroit, where we're encouraging women to be a part of that Tree Trim Academy.

It's a readiness program so that they can enter the skilled trades.

We are also engaging with students, a place where I'm really passionate about, STEM in general, and making sure that we reach those kids early and expose them to the sciences so that they can get interested, much less prepared, for taking on STEM careers when they become available.

So I'm like, stomping for STEM.

I'm over the Detroit area.

>>How are you doing that?

Are you you're in schools?

>>Yeah.

>>You have programs, you bring- >>Yeah, we have programs.

We are participating in FIRST Robotics, we support organizations like DAPCEP, Detroit Area Pre-College Engineering Program, we have girls in STEM.

So we are trying to, our best, to expose young girls early to STEM education and just get them interested in experimenting, and then making sure that they get the enrichment that they need so that they can pursue STEM in college.

>>How we succeed in Michigan can also come down to the policies we put in place and how we agree to move forward.

In Washington, polarizing politics seems to be a frustrating roadblock, and members of Michigan's congressional delegation both Republican and Democrat talked about the price of getting things done.

>>I think on the things I work on, that I have had these relationships longer than this term.

And so that has made a real difference, that regardless of the numbers, frankly, or who's in the majority, we've been able to work together and to do things.

I think it is, from my perspective, been more difficult to get the momentum on a number of things, particularly because Leader McConnell wants to be in the majority.

And so he doesn't want a lot of accomplishments coming for President Biden, or the slimmest majorities in the Senate.

Now we've been able to get past that.

You had, we had Secretary Buttigieg here, who's amazing, and talking about what we've done on transportation.

But that was with a President Biden, majorities, Democrats House and Senate, and luckily we had 19 colleagues, Republican colleagues, that joined us in the Senate.

>>Why can't we get common sense, public safety rules around guns?

I mean, I'm not here to advocate for one way or the other but it seems like we're not doing enough in our schools.

So how do you see a bill coming about?

And do you think you'll be able to get five, 10, 15 Republicans to go along with something that's common sense?

>>Well, you know, obviously I'm hopeful and you've gotta be hopeful.

And I think we're seeing some signs of that happening now to these two horrific tragedies within a, just a few days apart.

We now have a group talking, where there are five Republicans, part of that group.

We'll need at least 10 in order to move that forward, but it has to start somewhere to build that kind of trust and come together.

And I think what we have to do is step back and understand that there is no one thing that we can do that's gonna correct all of this.

It's gonna take an awful lot.

It's gonna be a, a process where we're gonna have to move forward and show some momentum and show some steps that we take to get there.

And that both sides have to back off a little bit from folks who want us, the solution that will end up, or not the solution, I should say, the action that we'll take in the short run will be one that people think we should do a whole lot more are gonna be unhappy about.

But it's also people who want to do absolutely nothing, are also gonna be unhappy about it's moving forward.

>>I want to be clear, no one, no one wants to see schools as a place of violence of any kind.

That's why, frankly, there are gun-free zones at schools.

That's why they always say, but here's the problem, people violate those, right?

And none of us, none of us want to put kids in Harm's way.

Now, if you look at the rhetoric that's out there, that's not how people express themselves, right?

So it's a little tough to come out of that corner when that's the parameters of the discussion.

So beyond that, what, and I agree, my number one list and my staff knows that I pound this incessantly, I hate, hate window dressing.

I hate things that make us feel good but don't actually get at root causes.

And what I believe we have really missed the boat on, and not only in this particular issue about violence, but in a few other things, is we are missing the root causes of why our kids are acting this way.

>>I just want to believe, I have talked to a number of Republican senators, I've talked to many Republican House colleagues of bills that there is some common ground that hopefully, we will not all go to our corners as we all do.

That's what happens every time there's crisis.

We go to our corners, we stand our ground.

We get into test-run fights with each other and we don't get anything done.

And I, how many shootings do we have to see?

How many children do we have to see shot?

Every one of these massive shootings have been done by someone under 21 years of age.

Can we not agree that we should not sell automatic weapons to someone under 21?

(audience applauds) >>I do think doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is the definition of insanity.

And what we are doing every time we have one of these shootings is not working.

Everyone goes to their corners, everyone shouts for 10 days, and then we just, it goes out of the headlines, and then we wait for another shooting.

And I'm the representative of Oxford, Michigan, where we just had our six-month anniversary of our own school shooting.

I gave a graduation speech at Oxford Virtual Academy the day after the shooting in Texas.

Do you know what it is to talk to kids, a third of them didn't show up because they were scared to be in a public place.

The shooting had just brought up all the emotion and trauma that they had experienced six months before.

I, there is a group right now, Debbie and I are part of the Problem Solvers caucus.

We are working with a group of senators who are trying, trying being the operative verb, to come up with something that we can agree on that will get 60 votes in the Senate.

It won't be everything that I want.

It won't, it will probably be more than some of the, my Republican colleagues- >>Give me a tangible example of what you would want that you don't think you're gonna get much of, or something you may have to compromise on, that- >>I mean, from the negotiations I've heard, there isn't an assault weapons ban in that conversation, there isn't a sort of a whole series of things that we're looking at on the House side.

But what there is is universal background checks, red flag laws, things that Florida, the governor of Florida supports after Parkland, things that we can do when we're honest with ourselves about what's going on.

>>And that brings us to politics, which is always on the unofficial Mackinac agenda.

So I'll bring back Stephen Henderson and Nolan Finley, our One Detroit contributors, because we do have midterm elections.

High offices up always change the atmosphere, just a little bit, a little bit more hustling around here.

Nolan, what do you think?

>>Yeah.

I mean, there's a lot of candidates for all sorts of office working this porch, working the lobby, trying to raise money, trying to gain endorsements and support.

It's sort of fun to watch.

I mean, particularly a lot of folks here from that 13th District race, which I think a third of Detroit is running for that seat.

(laughs) I'm still thinking about it, I don't know yet.

>>Not yet, still have time but you make sure your signatures are- >>I don't, I don't live in that District.

>>And of course we saw yesterday, Court of Appeals told Perry Johnson, you're not getting on the ballot.

You had, you didn't get your signatures.

And that's sort of the core thing you gotta do, if you want to run for office.

You gotta get on the ballot.

And a whole lot of Republicans didn't get on the ballot in that gubernatorial race.

And so I think Gretchen Whitmer could sleep a lot easier looking at the field she faces this time around.

I don't think there's anybody there who can beat her.

>>Does that go for the rest of the ticket, Stephen?

>>Well, Secretary of State and Attorney General, I think the Republican nominees for for those offices also give an enormous pass to to the incumbents.

I mean, I think there are issues, no matter what you think of Jocelyn Benson or Dana Nessel, I mean there are issues that you could pick up and say, hey look, I would do this differently, or I think I could do this better.

But you gotta have the right vessel to make that argument.

You gotta have a candidate that people don't think is bananas.

And these two folks who've been nominated for those two offices on the GOP side don't seem like credible candidates, no matter what they might say or what issues they might try to focus on.

And so it's a strange, it's a strange strategy in a year when Democrats are gonna have a hard time nationally.

It's a midterm election.

They're supposed to lose a lot of the political ground that they gained two years ago.

I'm not sure that's gonna happen in Michigan.

>>You know, we also have new districts and we've got State House seats that the turnover again.

And we talk about this, having this cohesive plan of moving forward.

It feels like we'll get new legislators in and that have to come up to speed on what are the policies that we need to put in place and long-term change that we need to do to impact things, Nolan.

>>Yeah, now you have redistricting coupled with term limits.

I got about a third of the folks in the current Senate aren't gonna be in the Senate.

Hopefully there will be a term limits proposal on the ballot in November where voters get a chance to change that.

And I think that'll be the single biggest improvement we can make to government in Michigan, is altering term limits to give people a little more time, little more experience in the Legislature.

>>Well, because the State of Michigan, according to a survey from the Detroit Regional Chamber, 70 percent of people say we are headed in the wrong direction.

>>In the wrong direction.

>>Stephen.

>>I don't know.

I feel like every time you take that survey, most people say, no, this is all wrong, I want something different.

You give them something different- >>That's because people usually don't take time to leave positive reviews, it's usually negative, right?

>>They give 'em something different then they're like, no, I still want something different.

I mean, look that dissatisfaction is, I think, is gonna have a bigger effect at the national level from Michigan than it will locally.

I think again, I think we're not gonna see credible challenges to the statewide offices that we should.

All three are democratic.

I don't know how you unseat any of them, given the politics and the challenges that people have.

Nationally though, I think that really, it's got to concern the Biden administration.

They're going into a midterm where numbers look much worse than they did even for the first Obama midterm, which was a blood bath.

>>And people are upset about inflation.

They are upset about the economy.

>>They are, they are.

>>The last time people were this angry, this dissatisfied, I think was 2010, and that election washed out Democrats- >>A lot of people- >>Up and down the ballot.

It wasn't just national level, I mean- >>No, you're right.

>>Even in, County Commissioners- >>In Legislatures.

>>And then the, before that, the 2000- 2006.

>>The second Bush election where Republicans got washed out.

>>Yeah.

>>When, voters get this angry it's a bad time to be incumbent in the ruling party, it really is.

>>All right, so we have some money infusion here in the State of Michigan.

What should be the concentrating right now on infusing education, infrastructure?

Give me your wishlist, Stephen.

>>So business leaders from- >>And yes, to all over the above, right?

>>Business Leaders from Michigan has this really great list out now about the path to Top 10, right?

Look at what's on that list.

Education, cooperation among the legislative and business and education interests to do that.

Investment in people, investment in infrastructure, the things we talk about all the time and don't move the needle on quite as much.

You gotta have a leader, I think, who can bring people together around that agenda and use that money for it.

>>That's where, Nolan?

>>We are, yeah, we are at risk of losing our bread and butter industry as it moves into this electric vehicle future.

I think every dollar we can spend on making Michigan competitive for new battery plants, new EV production, we need to be spending because it's going someplace else now.

And those are generational decisions.

Those will affect the industry for 50 years and we won't get them back.

And you lose the auto industry here, I don't know that that anything else matters.

>>I think it's interesting, some of the conversations that I'm sure have started up here at Mackinac on will continue off the Island.

Stephen Henderson, Nolan Finley, it's always good to see you guys.

We'll have to leave it there and end our coverage of the 2022 Mackinaw Policy Conference.

For all of the speakers and the sessions on demand.

You can just go to OneDetroitPBS.org.

Thanks to our partners at the Detroit Regional Chamber, we are all invested in how the decision makers and Detroit Public Television is proud to be able to bring this conference statewide for the 12th year in a row.

Stay with One Detroit for in-depth coverage of the issues that matter to you most.

For all of us at Detroit Public TV, I'm Christy McDonald.

Take care, and I'll see you next time.

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