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Mitt Ronmey calls it the "SWAT team" approach.
That's the name he gave to the strategy he would employ for keeping companies - and therefore jobs - in Massachusetts. The unit, to be comprised of top business executives and civic and education leaders, would come together when an employer is in trouble or thinking about leaving the Bay State. "We would go to work and make sure they stay in Massachusetts."
The SWAT team is one of many economic development strategies outlined by Romney during a campaign stop in Springfield late last month, where the candidate unveiled his plan, "Working for Better Jobs." His power-point presentation outlined a number of initiatives, everything from a proposal to link the state's minimum wage to inflation to plans to provide more and better child-care facilities.
Speaking in the Deliso Videoconferencing Center at Springfield Technical Community College, Romney, the former Winter Olympics chief, said all the things one might expect a gubernatorial hopeful to say while stopping in the Pioneer Valley.
Declaring that he was "bullish on Western Mass.," Romney vowed that no region of the state would be left behind in his push to create new job opportunities.
"My plan is focused on those areas that are so far from Beacon Hill that they're often afterthoughts," he told the group of assembled business owners, government leaders, and supporters. "I want to make sure that Western Mass., Central Mass., the Merrimack Valley, and Southeastern Mass. are all forethoughts, that we think about them, that we think about planning and economic development as it relates to those regions."
He also said he would create economic development task forces for each region of the state and that he would chair each of those bodies. "I want to be the top salesman for the entire state," he said, "Economic development is not a Boston matter; it's a state matter, for all the regions."
Behind the predictable campaign rhetoric, however, Romney spoke candidly about the hurdles to job creation...