January 12, 2010

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

ITASCA – State Senator Carole Pankau (R-Itasca) is once again reiterating the importance of instituting a countywide program to spur organic job growth. Over the last four months Pankau has been touting her three pronged approach to improve the DuPage economy.

The three prongs are:

- Open the DuPage County Online job board to all units of local Government

- Host an annual DuPage County job fair, where the 118 major corporations in DuPage County can work with the County government to bring in the best and brightest residents of the County

- Develop and implement a “Buy Local – Buy DuPage” program to create a mechanism for sustained and organic economic growth throughout DuPage County.

“If every resident of our county were to spend just $2 more per day in DuPage County, we would see a natural growth of 5%, or $728 Million dollars,” Pankau stated. “This is not a difficult thing to ask our residents to do, this is simply educating them about how to help our local businesses by buying local – buying DuPage.”

“Being an active participant in the Buy Local Buy DuPage initiative is pretty easy, people can buy a cup of Starbucks in DuPage that they would normally buy in Cook or buy a gallon of milk in DuPage that you would normally buy in Will county, people can go grocery shopping in DuPage county as opposed to Lake county, and with the average family spending $120 a week on groceries, just one week’s worth of food would account for 2 months of Buying Local,” Pankau said. “The first two parts of my economic development plan are things the County Board could be, and should be doing right now, the Buy Local Buy DuPage is something that we should start working on right now so we can have it up and running before the summer. It is much easier to accomplish things in Government when you don’t care who gets the credit, when it comes to job growth and putting people back to work, I don’t care WHO gets the credit so long as people can start working again.”