ENID — Business owners, legislators and members of regional chambers of commerce were asked Wednesday to give their ideas on what should be issues for discussion in the 2013 legislative session.

They were attending the 2012 Small Business & Small Manufacturer Regional Summit at Oakwood Country Club. The event was hosted by The State Chamber of Oklahoma and facilitated by Lt. Gov. Todd Lamb.

“We want to hear directly from the business owners and manufacturers in our communities, and hear their concerns and barriers to growth,” said Chad Warmington, State Chamber chief operating officer.

Warmington said information gathered Wednesday, and in subsequent summits across the state, will be used by State Chamber lobbyists to set the “right track for our legislative agenda” and “lobby the Legislature in the next session for the things that will move Oklahoma forward.”

Lamb opened the summit by urging the audience to voice their concerns and complaints about legislative issues.

“In public policy, politics and in small business, sometimes you have to call the baby ugly,” Lamb said. “We’re not here to complain just for the sake of complaining. As we formulate our agendas we need to know what your challenges, impediments and frustrations are as you work in manufacturing and business in northwest Oklahoma.”

Lamb asked the audience: “Based on your life experience, what you do for a living and what your company does, what is your greatest impediment to growth?”

Answers from the audience raised concerns about: transportation and infrastructure; state regulatory requirements, particularly in the area of CDL licensing; workers’ compensation, including workers’ compensation fraud and the increasing cost of workers’ compensation insurance; access to start-up and investment capital; implementation of federal health care reforms; and work force recruitment and retention.

Lamb gave an optimistic outlook on business growth in Oklahoma, but said the state needs to remain proactive in addressing challenges to small business and manufacturing.

“Northwest Oklahoma, and Oklahoma as a whole, is headed in the right track,” Lamb said, citing the state’s low unemployment rate, particularly in northwest Oklahoma.

“The time is now to invest in northwest Oklahoma,” he said. “But, with that good news, we still have to address these challenges.

“We want to continue to win, and we need to address these challenges before us so we can continue to add quality jobs and keep our families here.”

Workers’ comp reform and health care issues garnered considerable attention in the morning’s discussion, but the region’s need for more qualified workers dominated comments at the summit.

Jon Blankenship, president and CEO of the Greater Enid Chamber of Commerce, said work force recruiting and development is the greatest concern for business growth in the region.

“Our biggest challenge is training workers for the jobs we have available here in the region,” Blankenship said. “It’s not a problem isolated to Enid. It’s the whole northwest quadrant of the state. We have more jobs available than we have people to fill them.”

Blankenship said there is no simple answer to filling the skilled job openings in northwest Oklahoma.

“It’s going to take a combination of work force development, of growing our own workers, and recruitment, of recruiting people from outside our market and moving them here to work,” he said. “It’s going to take both those areas to solve our work force issues, and it’s not going to be an overnight solution.”

Blankenship said more work needs to be done in educating unemployed workers in other parts of the country on the opportunities in northwest Oklahoma.

“It is frustrating that other parts of the country still have 8.5 percent unemployment, and we can’t get those people to move here, where we’ve got less than 4 percent unemployment. We’ve got to do a better job of connecting supply with demand in the work force, and we definitely have the demand for more workers.”

James Strate, Autry Technology Center superintendent and CEO, said demand is high not just for skilled workers, but for anyone able to undergo training.

“I could place 50 diesel mechanics today, and probably 150 welders,” Strate said. “The system is there to train them, we just need the people.”

Strate said currently there are more than 1,000 openings for CDL drivers, and high demand for welders, diesel and automotive mechanics and workers skilled in the building trades.

Finding people able to complete training may be more difficult than actually providing the training.

“There is capacity in the CareerTech system ... by adding short-term classes and fast-track training, we have the capability to meet the need,” Strate said. “We have the flexibility to do it, we just have to find the people who can meet the entry-level requirements to complete the training.”

Warmington said basic entry-level requirements, such as the ability to pass a drug test and not having any felony convictions, are a major barrier to work force development in the state.

“It’s not necessarily that you can’t get people trained,” he said. “The problem we’re seeing more is, the people you can find don’t necessarily have the life skills needed to receive the training.”

Warmington cited a recent recruiting effort by a large Oklahoma manufacturer in which 60 applicants were called in for drug screenings. Only two out of the 60 applicants passed the drug test.

“Is it a lack of people,” he asked the audience, “or is it a lack of qualified people, or people who don’t have felonies, who can pass a drug test and undergo training?”

Several people answered in unison, “It’s both.”

One possible long-term solution to the lack of skilled workers, posed by Warmington, is to guide more kids into trade training programs instead of college.

“Maybe we need to stop beating into our kids’ heads that you’re unsuccessful if you don’t go to college,” he said. “We see a lot of jobs go unfilled that are great jobs that don’t require a college degree.

“You don’t need a college degree to go make $80,000 a year working sheet metal for an aerospace company, and those jobs are out there.”

Strate said there are many CareerTech programs that lead into college degree paths, while other kids may be better suited to completing a skilled trade certification.

“For generations now we’ve sold kids the idea that you have to go to college to be successful,” Strate said. “Now, we have college graduates coming back to the CareerTech system to learn skills so they can get a job.”

He recommended expanding career awareness at the elementary and junior high school levels, and reinstating high school trade internships.

“We’ve got to get industry back into the schools, and get kids from the schools and into the companies,” he said.

Sen. Patrick Anderson, R-Enid, said more funding may be needed for the state’s CareerTech centers, particularly those centers in areas with the greatest demand for trained workers.

“There are some things we can do at the legislative level to help facilitate more training,” Anderson said. “If the state could provide more equipment to the CareerTech system to provide more training, that could help the CareerTech system meet the employers’ needs. And, we provide that by funding.”

Anderson said the state may need to shift funding within the Oklahoma CareerTech budget to meet the training needs in higher-demand areas.

“We’ve always had the idea that everybody in CareerTech needs to be funded equally,” Anderson said. “We need to have a little more focused distribution of dollars, so if the job demand is in northwest Oklahoma, let’s put more money here. That’s what’s going to create more jobs and more positive growth for the state as a whole.”

And, if redistributing money within the existing budget doesn’t meet the need, Anderson said he would not be opposed to increasing the CareerTech budget.

“We will have to look at it closely,” he said, “and if we need more money, let’s spend it on a program that builds jobs, instead of spending it building more museums.”