Quote Originally Posted by EBAH View Post
The obvious and super frustrating part is yes, 1000% turns out high quality education pays off and our nextdoor neighbor that we are so jealous of has understood that for a VERY long time and for some reason it has never rubbed off. Also, we absolutely lost a couple of larger deals (and this is not speculation it is fact) because of a political climate and legislation that is just flat out bad for business. I don't want to get in a right vs left kind of thing and I know it's not allowed here, but fact is, the larger the business, the more they will 100% require a legal climate that gives them the widest range of relocation options, available workers and talent they can get and the last 5-10 years have produced some laws on the books that large international companies just absolutely prohibit for relocation, and I know for a fact a couple of very large companies have just literally said that in clear terms.
I think that's valid. 100%.

I think our long term prospects at keeping Paycom might be looking a little iffy at this point. Its CEO has picked a fight with the very influential GOP lobbying group, OCPAC, and suddenly, Chad Richison is now no longer welcome at his alma mater, even after making a pretty substantial donation to improve the athletic facilities. Our state is eating its own. Our neighbor to the South has mastered the art of cosplaying as yeehaw buffoons to get reelected, but they also know that higher education is necessary to support industry and growth. Here in Oklahoma, we have poltiicians talking about cutting 100% of the higher ed budget. I can tell you Texas would never do something so dumb--or even talk about it out in the open. Even talk like that is going to scare away investment.

And so now, we're left with companies like Canoo and it appears the State has just been a party to some overall pump and dump type scheme. Fortunately, we structured the deal around some solid metrics and the state isn't going to be left that much in the lurch. Maybe just a little embarrassed.

But no one is going to want to locate a major plant here until Oklahoma's public education sector can get it together--and I don't mean by privatizing.


I hire a lot of very high level CS engineers and EE's and it amazes me how flippant our government is to these segments and how little they understand that the cost of building a factory pales in comparison to the hassle and cost of securing the best of the best engineers. Oklahoma has got to get passed this "but we have cheap land" argument because in these spaces, if that's all you got, you got nothing.[/QUOTE]