12 percent of workers

12 percent of workers

Welcome to a laptop battery specialist of the IBM Laptop Battery

"Other economic-development guys tend to talk in theoreticals," Ashe observes. "Frank doesn't. He's very concrete, very much into the particulars of a project. I find that refreshing."

Cioffi worked for years, both inside and outside the administration of Gov. Howard Dean, to persuade Husky, a Canadian manufacturer of plastic moldings, to open a plant in Milton that would pay good wages to several hundred Vermonters. Husky finally did build its factory, but job numbers there never spiraled as high as boosters had projected.

GBIC's most visible contribution to the Burlington-area economy takes the form of the seven industrial parks with battery such as Lenovo L08S6D12 Battery, Lenovo IdeaPad U330 Battery, Lenovo 43R1954 Battery, Lenovo 3000 Y300 Battery, Lenovo 40Y8318 Battery, Lenovo FRU 42T5251 Battery, Lenovo ThinkPad X60 Tablet PC Battery, Lenovo 57Y6455 Battery, Lenovo IdeaPad Z560 Battery, Lenovo IdeaPad B570 Battery, Lenovo 43R2499 Battery, Lenovo FRU 42T5264 Battery it has built since its launch in 1954. One of those manufacturer clusters, in Burlington's South End, was the home of a start-up that GBIC "took a gamble on," Cioffi recalls. Helping to finance a facility for a snowboard maker paid off. Burton Snowboards grew to become one of Vermont's greatest economic-development success stories.

The heroic era of heavy industry ended a long time ago, however — both in Vermont and nationally. Manufacturing accounted for about 20 percent of the jobs in Chittenden County around the start of this century; today, fewer than 12 percent of workers in the Burlington area produce goods. GBIC hasn't built an industrial park since 1983, but it's moving toward converting an unused portion of IBM property into a field of corporate dreams in Essex.

Cioffi says he realizes that the GBIC moniker may seem archaic or misleading. In recognition that "industrial" is no longer really where it's at, the entity's board considered changing the "I" in the title to "innovation," Cioffi relates. But a branding expert recommended against the revision on the grounds that it's simpler just to refer to the operation as "GBIC," without spelling out the acronym.

Although nothing in its name says "improved workforce training," that's also part of Cioffi's job in relation to both job retention and recruitment. He says that the number of jobs available in the state won't matter much if there aren't enough qualified Vermonters to fill them.

It's hard to say whether Cioffi performs well in regard to preserving jobs, according to Vermont auditor-elect Doug Hoffer, another Democrat/Progressive. "I've never seen a meaningful indicator of that kind of effectiveness. How would one quantify success in preventing jobs from going away?" Hoffer wonders.