WisBusiness.com interviewed a few Wisconsin business executives, and found them complimentary of the Walker administration and its approach to Wisconsin’s employers so far:

“We did very well,” said Kurt Bauer, CEO of Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, the state’s largest business lobby.

“We’ve seen some historic reforms both within the budget and within the first six months of the session that have really changed the business climate and how business leaders around the nation see Wisconsin.” …

Brandon Scholz, CEO of the Wisconsin Grocers Association, said he, too, was pleased with the budget bill because it didn’t include new regulations, tax hikes or fees and “does not make it tougher for companies that drive our economy and hire people.”

“This is a good budget because it doesn’t impose any additional burdens on the business community,” he said.

Tom Still, president of the Wisconsin Technology Council, also lauded Walker and the Legislature.

“This budget will protect and enhance some of the key investments in small business formation in Wisconsin, which is an area where Wisconsin has great potential to improve,” he said.

“Creating 10,000 new businesses over four years will be a tall order, but it’s achievable if the state and the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. foster the right conditions and provide appropriate incentives. Technology-based businesses create jobs that pay well above the statewide average, and Wisconsin is poised to compete on a global basis.”

Not everyone is pleased, of course. One displeased person has good reason; the other does not, and he is …

“Gov. Walker’s budget includes tax breaks for manufacturers even if they cut jobs,” said Assembly Democratic Leader Peter Barca, D-Kenosha, a former Midwest regional administrator to the U.S. Small Business Administration. “Unfortunately, this budget also slashes funding by nearly a third for job retraining programs that companies support and that help match workers with new jobs.”

Barca said Walker and Republican legislative leaders should be using targeted tax cuts that focus on economic development initiatives directly targeted at producing jobs.

In other words, Barca wants to go back to the approach of the Doyle administration, which resulted in the crappy economy and business climate the Walker administration is trying to undo, plus a multi-billion-dollar budget deficit to boot. Voters had their say about that approach Nov. 2, which is why Barca is now in the minority party in the Legislature. (And how did Barca get to the SBA? Because his Congressional career ended at the hands of former U.S. Rep. Mark Neumann, that’s how — fortunately for Barca before Bill Clinton’s term as president ended.)

The valid objection:

Jeff Hamilton, president of the Wisconsin Brewers Guild and Milwaukee’s Sprecher Brewing Co., said he was disappointed Walker didn’t veto a provision in the budget that small brewers believe will harm their ability to expand.

“Generally, the majority of this budget is a good thing,” he said. “But business models that were available to us before this budget no longer exist, so our company has been devalued and opportunities for entrepreneurs to develop their businesses have been taken away and we’re not too happy about that.”

He said his association is working with several legislators do away with the changes.

Hamilton also bristled at comments by Walker that craft brewers didn’t understand changes to the state’s beer distribution rules in the budget.

“For him to say that was insulting to small brewers because it implies that we don’t know anything about our business or the government affairs that affect it,” he said.

Hamilton echoes a point made in this blog and by others — that government has no business picking winners and losers, whether that means a kind of business (green energy, for instance) or a specific business (MillerCoors over Anheuser–Busch in this case).

Bauer made another point about which I will quibble:

… passage of a balanced budget without raising taxes … “sends a message to business leaders in our state and nationwide that Wisconsin is no longer in denial about the seriousness of our chronic budget deficits. It has created a positive buzz for our state.“

He said the balanced budget contrasts Wisconsin “very nicely” with the neighboring states of Illinois, which has raised taxes, and proposed tax hikes in Minnesota.

“It also removes uncertainly about the future direction of the state for business leaders, which positions Wisconsin better than many other states which lack the courage to make the tough but necessary choices to get their fiscal houses in order.”

Removing uncertainty is good. (The substantial uncertainty about what Barack Obama wants to infest upon business has much to do with why the U.S. economy is how it now is.) The budget, however, is only legally balanced, not factually balanced, because state law requires only that the budget be balanced on a cash basis, and not on Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, as most states require. Given that Wisconsin was one of only two states to have a GAAP deficit every year during the first decade of the 21st century, I’m guessing the state still has a substantial GAAP deficit.

Even though, as Hamilton puts it, “the majority of this budget is a good thing,” it’s far too early to claim that the state’s economy will improve. For one thing, if the recall elections go the wrong way, further initiatives to improve the state’s business climate would be stopped by a Democrat-controlled Senate, or even a one-vote-majority GOP Senate if that one vote is Sen. Dale Schultz (RINO–Richland Center). (Of course, Democrats are deluding themselves in thinking a Democrat-controlled Senate will be able to roll back, for instance, public employee collective bargaining restrictions given Walker’s strongest veto pen in the nation.)

The bad business climate this state has had throughout the 2000s will require much more repair, in reducing taxes, defanging overaggressive regulators, reducing taxes, reducing the size and scope of state and local government, and reducing taxes. Progress depends on what happens in the August recall elections and the November 2012 elections, and what the Legislature and governor do in between elections.

U.S. Sen.  Marco Rubio (R–Florida) wasn’t talking about Wisconsin, but what he said about the country as a whole particularly applies to Wisconsin: “We don’t need new taxes. We need new taxpayers.” As in those filling new jobs created by entrepreneurs.

The latest state business climate ranking shows that Wisconsin has ascended from disaster area to, well, mediocrity.

CNBC’s America’s Top States for Business 2011 ranks Wisconsin 25th, up from 29th in 2010. Wisconsin ranks below Minnesota (seventh), Iowa (ninth),  Indiana (15th), Missouri (16th) and Illinois (19th), and ahead of only Michigan (34th) among Midwestern states.

The CNBC comparison “measures the states by their own standard: the selling points they use to attract business. We separate those pitches into the ten categories, which are then weighted in the study based on how frequently the states use them as selling points.” Which is an interesting approach. Most business climate comparisons rate states based not on the seller’s perspective, but the buyer’s — that is, the perspective of businesses that have to deal with the tax and regulatory structures of each state, as well as the other things that go into a state’s share of the U.S. economy.

Wisconsin ranked (the higher ranking the better, of course) 13th in the cost of doing business (income and property taxes, office and industrial rental costs, and utility costs), 15th in education (K–12 and post-high school), 19th in quality of life, 21st in technology and innovation, 22nd in infrastructure and transportation and in “economy” (including “projected budget gaps and surpluses”), 23rd in cost of living, 27th in access to capital, 28th in business friendliness (“the perceived ‘friendliness’ of their legal and regulatory frameworks to business”), and 46th in workforce (“the education level of their workforce, as well as the numbers of available workers,” worker training programs, and level of unionization, because “While organized labor contends that a union workforce is a quality workforce, that argument, more often than not, doesn’t resonate with business”).

It is interesting to note that our 13th ranking in the top factor in this survey, cost of doing business, was basically negated by the second factor, “workforce.” The workforce ranking also seems to belie the state’s education ranking (is it possible that state schools are, dare we suggest, overrated?) while demonstrating again that in the minds of business (that is, the employers of most workers), unions are fundamentally anti-business.

The next point perhaps explains why Wisconsin finished where it did in the Midwest:

In 2011, for the first time since we launched the study, states are de-emphasizing their cost of doing business — including taxes and utility rates. That could be because states are facing pressure to raise taxes or lower business incentives in order to balance their budgets. …

Rather than crowing about their low costs, states are increasingly accentuating the positive aspects of a negative economy—like a plethora of available workers.

Wisconsin is one of those states that already raised its taxes — $2 billion of tax increases by the spendthrift Doyle administration and the previous tax-wasting Legislature. Illinois raised its taxes earlier this year, and Minnesota is about to raise its taxes because Minnesotans cannot stand the thought of a government shutdown. So perhaps next year’s comparison will raise Wisconsin’s standing in the Midwest.

Until then, certainly 25th is better than, say, 30th or 44th. It is not, however, something to crow about, which may be why the Walker administration didn’t send out a news release trumpeting a 25th ranking. The various subrankings also seem to indicate that Wisconsin needs to do a lot more work, and not just in taxes, to improve the state’s business ranking.