RALEIGH — NC TECH’s president and CEO Brooks Raiford recently interviewed NC’s Secretary of Commerce, Tony Copeland, as part of an on-going series called NC TECH Talk.
During the interview, the pair discussed how North Carolina is responding to the needs of existing and potential businesses as the economic slow-down progresses, and how business recruitment continues in this environment.
Here’s a transcript of what they said:
Brooks: Hello everyone I’m Brooks Raiford, president of the North Carolina Technology Association or NC Tech and I’d like to welcome you to this episode of NC Tech Talk thanks to our partnership with Cisco and their WebEx platform. We’re recording today’s conversation and we’ll send you a link to it in our follow up. NC Tech has been incorporating virtual sessions as part of our overall programming including this NC Tech Talk series where we engage key leaders from across North Carolina and beyond to talk about what’s on their mind and how their organization is adapting to today’s environment. North Carolina has become a significant player in the tech sector and the North Carolina Department of Commerce plays a key role in bringing many significant tech players to our state. I’m very pleased to have as our special guest today, my friend Tony Copeland, North Carolina’s Secretary of Commerce. He’s here with us to talk a bit about how the state is faring from an economic development perspective our format today. We’ll start with some welcoming remarks from our sponsor and then I’ll take it from there and ask Secretary Copeland several prepared questions. We invite our visitors to use the Q&A function to submit additional questions for the secretary and I’ll do my best to incorporate those throughout our conversation.
To start off, I wonder if you can talk a bit given the time that we’re in here about how your office and the Department of Commerce have adapted to the whole working remotely working from home circumstances, assuming your team is primarily working remotely. Can you talk about how that transition has gone well since the governor put in a state of emergency.
Sec. Copeland: We have been working remotely from Commerce. There’s a core team here all the time – it has to be because Finance has to continue to work and I have to continue to work, but it is primarily remote. It has been quite an adjustment to this to say the least but we are functioning well and in fact the core functions and Commerce are humming along as they were before.
Brooks: Well that’s great. You know I know that before the pandemic hit there was tremendous work going on in the recruitment of companies of all kinds but especially those in the tech sector to come to North Carolina. How has COBIT impacted those discussions, both with your domestic prospects and your international ones.
Sec. Copeland: There’s a bit of irony here what’s going on during the Perdue administration. The division of Employment Security was moved under the umbrella of the Department of Commerce. If one looks at that right now, we have over a million people that are receiving unemployment assistance in North Carolina out of a workforce of about four and a half million people, incredibly pay out over five billion dollars so far in three months an unemployment. At the same time, we were very prepared I believe for job recruitment in the virtual environment economic developments. It has changed dramatically in the last 20 years. So much of it is done virtually on any given day to the point of we’re looking at sites from drones these days internationally to date we are about a billion and a half dollars of inward investment ahead of where we were last year at this time and we’re several thousand jobs ahead of where we were last year this time so there’s a bit of inverted. We have high unemployment but our job recruitment is still going gangbusters. You know, you’ve seen Xerox, Microsoft… you’ve seen the biotech industry, with Grail. All of these companies continue to come in the billions of investment. Last week, we had the largest economic development project so far as jobs go in the history of North Carolina. Centene announced 3,200 jobs in Charlotte and a $1.2 billion investment.
Brooks: And if I recall, the average wage was pretty attractive too… what was that?
Sec. Copeland: A hundred thousand?
Brooks: Yeah, not bad.
Sec. Copeland: Honeywell, which was basically a technology play and a headquarters play here in Charlotte last year, their average salary was about $348,000.
Brooks: Goodness…. Well, we’ve seen trends… or at least, there’s been a lot of claims – I think the report just showed the number of unemployment claims last week for North Carolina. I read the article – and it’s down a bit but it’s still a large number, is that right?
Sec. Copeland: Well, in February of this year, I was going around the world basically posting about how we had a 3.5 percent unemployment rate in North Carolina and basically had a workforce shortage. A month later, within 48 hours we were laying off thousands of people, primarily in the hospitality industry which we hit first. And we went to about over a million people quickly. But, we are making tremendous strides in that too… However, unemployment system has been… basically, it’s been an assault on it. You know, the system was designed to take in 3,000 claims per week on the given day. I believe April 15th, more or less, we had 54,000 claims processed in one day. Some days we have over a hundred thousand call attempts coming into the system
Brooks: And you’ve been doing that – not to dwell on this particular topic – but I know you’ve been doing some rapid hiring to be able to handle the backlog that had built up previously and it made a lot of headway there.
Sec. Copeland: We have we have gotten the majority of the claims at least in the queue and we’re processing them rapidly now. In all fairness I have to say the curve is going the correct way. I never thought I would be ecstatic to see that we’re only we’re processing only 12,000 claims a day which, which is more than relevant in a month prior to this
Brooks: Right, I guess everything is relative for sure
Sec. Copeland: But we have bought in. We contracted with the outside contractor to come in to help with a call center. We have developed some technology, with the help of some of your members actually, to handle online some of the claims. As can imagine, the network was shutting down because of the overload coming in and we had to work with some of your members to help us with that. Also in DIT with the state has been tremendously helpful.
Brooks: DIT is also a proud member of the Association so I’m glad to hear that. Well listen, we have a question that came in actually that relates to our annual tech conference that’s coming up. Normally have this the large state tech conference in May. We clearly did not do that this May but we moved it to late July. On the 23rd and 24th we’ll be hosting our annual State of Technology Conference and it’ll be virtual and the theme or the title this year is “Data: the new natural resource” – so the importance of all the data that’s collected out there from governments, organizations and companies raises all sorts of needs and questions and considerations, ranging from security to storage to how do you deploy it, who owns the data…. all those sorts of thing. So someone asked what thoughts do you have about data science and data literacy as a driver of economic activity. And I guess it in layman’s terms, the degree to which you’re finding that the companies that are looking to grow here or move here or add a new post here are really dependent on that sort of skill set.
Sec. Copeland: Let me answer that in a more generalized way but with some precise answers. Last year, Lowe’s located in Charlotte… 1600 hundred people. It is basically were all of their data operations are going to take place and where their online operations will be. Part of that and all of it basically was dependent on the workforce that we have that have those skills. One of the things we did at Commerce is we bought Lowe’s and all of their team from Dallas and other places here. Dallas was our competition. They came here in Cisco’s campus. We bought all of our schools of engineering there to talk about the skill sets that we have here. At the end of the day they told us it was our workforce that was a determining factor and if you look at all of our schools of engineering – if I go through them all I’ll leave out some – but we had all of the major ones there from the state of North Caroline. Diversity of workforce is important too , in the schools of engineering. North Carolina A&T is actually one of our biggest recruitment tools for West Coast data-centric companies.
Brooks: That’s great, that’s great. And I know I’ve heard the CEO of Cisco has commented the number one university in the world for them to recruit is NC State so we have some real strong institutions here.
Sec. Copeland: Actually, we have a lot of experience with their leadership team coming out of NC State too.
Brooks: Good, good. I’m a proud Wolfpacker myself but not so much a technologist, so I’ll just take the compliment on behalf of the school. Changing gears a little bit, over the past three months NC Tech has conducted a semi-monthly poll of leaders in the state’s tech sector in an attempt to gauge the impact of COVID-19 on their businesses and there seems to be some consensus among the respondents that measurable economic recovery won’t begin until probably the fourth quarter, maybe some stabilization in the third quarter but real improvement in the fourth quarter, and that the shape of that recovery will either be a U shape, which implies a steep downward trajectory which we’ve been through, and then a leveling off with a strong rebound or a W shape, and that choice has actually risen in our poll of late, which is a decline followed by a snap rebound but then a second decline in rebound that might be sparked by, say a wave two of COVID maybe over the winter. What’s your take on that? What are you hearing and what does your gut tell you about timing and nature of recovery?
Sec. Copeland: You know, other than listen to the economists like we all do, I can look at the activity that’s coming here through the Department of Commerce and the companies, the Fortune 500 companies and the like, most of them are keenly sold on North Carolina. Most of them are continuing to meet with us and speak with us because they’re looking, you know, if we look two years down the road is when they’ll be hiring again… I did not see that sector slowing down at all. In fact, I see the technology sector continuing to be robust…. and you talk to them on a day-to-day basis, but I see the technology sector as booming. Where we’re going to see major changes the most is what was hit first: the hospitality industry and retail. I think retail is going to be changed forever. It was already moving in that direction and we’re talking to a lot of the companies that are involved with retail and how a lot of that’s going to move online and how that’s going to affect us in North Carolina. I think so far as the economy, we’re going to be well prepared. What we also have to be prepared for is the upskilling and rescaling some of these people coming out of other companies. That’s a more long-term, problematic thing but I you look at what happened, you know, in the first three years of this century we lost more manufacturing jobs than any other state in the country. And we’ve come back robustly, with a lot of retraining robust in different sectors. We’re gonna have to look at those sectors the same way.
Brooks: All good points, especially on the reskills and upskilling. Tony, a number of years ago, North Carolina revised its main incentive programs, such that companies had to meet certain milestones in order to receive those incentives. Are you seeing any impact of COVID on the ability of companies to meet those commitments, those that are already in some sort of series of years where they’ve got to meet certain hiring goals to receive incentives. Have there been any slowdowns in that?
Sec. Copeland: Actually, by the time I look at people’s requirements on the incentives it’s usually a year after this, back when I get their reports. But we’ve been talking to companies proactively, almost from day one, anticipating that this would affect many of their obligations. Most people are probably familiar with the job development investment grant, that you are under a contractual obligation to have certain investment in certain jobs. Knowing that to hold a company to those obligations would be somewhat unfair, and we have amended our procedures… and we can do that internally. This year, all of those requirements, if the company chooses, that obligation will be forgiven and moved forward another year.
Brooks: Got you, so they can stay on they can stay on track by correcting…
Sec. Copeland: Exactly, the last thing we want to do is for someone to do is to fail and not stay on track. And if next year we’re in the same predicament, we’ll continue to look at that.
Brooks: Okay a related question… those of us who work in and around the economic development world know that a variety of factors impact a company’s decision to invest in new or existing presences in a given state. You touched on one, which is that workforce is obviously a key driver for a lot of decisions like that. Incentives are just part of the equation, but I think in the in the press and the public mind, they probably think of incentives as being the decider in far more cases than that’s really the case, so can you share with us what factors you see playing the biggest roles when companies do decide to launch or to grow their presence in North Carolina.
Sec. Copeland: Well like I said, I think the workforce issue has to be taken care of number one before we even get to the incentives. And then when we get to incentives… infrastructure, depending on the type of company, whether it’s airports, whether it’s highways, whether there’s natural gas, whether there’s fiber optics. And today fiber optics are considered, if you don’t have that, that’s also something. Broadband and fiber optic are a given and if that’s not available, you get overlooked, so that’s the infrastructure. But education and workforce, I know I sound like a parrot, but without that no company is going anywhere. And if you look at the number of graduates that are coming out of our universities, Wake Tech alone and the community colleges have 70,000 people right here in the Triangle, and you have those all over the state. But incentives, if you’re not in the incentives game there is a real problem because they’re everywhere. A state that is not offering incentive, I think, creates a question. You know, most of the projects were driven by consultants also. Also, incentives are part of the way that all of this is packaged and so it’s a very important part of an equation. And all of the incentives aren’t necessarily cash, you know… DOT, community college, training, university involvement and all of those come into the incentive package.
Brooks: Also, along with sometimes physical infrastructure, you touched on that, whether it’s a rail spur or road or something that makes the site work well for the company that’s coming here. I think also it gets lost a lot of times in reporting that the cash part of the incentives aren’t always …. Well, how’s the best way to phrase this…. If the company hadn’t come in the first place, there would have been no abatement and it’s not like money would have come from that place where there’s not a site there with employees. And even though there’s abatement sometimes for the company, of course they’re employing people who, in turn, are paying sales tax, paying income tax, all that sort of thing. So there’s tax revenue that comes from these investments, just from the human resources side of things.
Sec. Copeland: Yes, I mean if you look at the major incentive program that we have, I’ll go back to the job development investment grant – it’s a return on a percentage of the payroll taxes that they hire. Before hiring the people, they would not get an incentive. North Carolina rarely, if ever, puts cash upfront in a project. The company commits contractually in a contract to employing people, committing capital investment, and in return they get a return for what they have paid into the state.
Brooks: Lead off our conversation today saying that North Carolina is known among other things as being a place where there’s a lot of technology and tech talent and so forth… But you’re in charge of it all, so why don’t you tell us some of the sectors in addition to technology that have the greatest activity in terms of inbound inquiries or your own outreach to try to attract other industries.
Sec. Copeland: Life science is one of our most robust sectors that we have. Once again, that goes back to workforce… and it’s easy to look at the universities that we have in providing the workforce, plus community colleges. One of the sectors that has been very robust for us, and we’re really moving into leadership, is aviation. The aerospace and aviation sector is being particularly hit by COVID, especially those companies that are in the commercial sector, rather than the military sector. The military contracts are continuing, but just a few weeks ago, the number of passengers flying out of Raleigh Durham airport was down by 90 percent, so that is affecting what aviation is doing. And we look at Boeing and we look at, we have GE aerospace and we have a big Boeing presence here, and Honda Aviation’s headquarters is in Greensboro. And that’s a whole different sector but all of these are being affected a lot.
And manufacturing. We still have one of the largest manufacturing workforces in America that has changed dramatically in the 21st century to advanced manufacturing and advanced textiles. We relocated 500 people in Rockingham County two weeks ago. They will do non-woven textiles, think of that. We have a number of Israeli companies here that are in non-woven textiles and advanced manufacturing. One not too long ago did a $180 million dollar expansion. So, manufacturing is still robust. We are the third largest Daimler investment in North America with, Freightliner and Thomas Buses and some of their supply chains that are here. So we are an automotive state even though people…. I consider a Freightliner automotive, while people may not be riding around in pleasure or manufacturing the trucks, there are thousands of people employed there. We have almost 200,000 people employed in North Carolina within in the supply chain for automobiles. So we’re very dependent as a state in automobile manufacturing and you look at supply chain and a lot of international Japanese companies… AW in Durham has about 2,500 people making transmissions for Toyota, just to say the least.
You know, agriculture it’s still one of our largest industries of course and so that has been particularly devastated the last few years by trade and we’ve seen that start to come back too.
Brooks: We’re seeing a lot of activity around Ag tech. You know, SAS has a whole division of it and there’s some real activity there. You touched on the automotive supply chain and I think that’s been somewhat of a hidden secret to a lot of people. I don’t think that’s the first thing that comes to their mind where North Carolina has a strong presence, but we have for some time. There’s been a lot of talk about the effort to have a mega site ready for a major auto plant one of these days. Any comments on sort of where we are with opportunities there?
Sec. Copeland: We’re going to pursue the automotive and the mega site and, you know, it’s no secret that we came in second for Toyota a few years ago in the Triad area. But it’s important to have these sites ready and we need to continue to work on multiple sites. It takes years to get them ready. Toyota even told us when they were looking here that for every hour they were late, they had to book about $80,000. So when they look at a site, if it’s not ready to begin building and if it’s not pad ready, you’re probably behind the curve and not going to be there. They ended up going to Alabama, which already had a site prepared that Volkswagen did not take.
Brooks: I want to remind our audience if you want to submit a question for the secretary, we have a few minutes left in our time with him so use the Q&A function to do that and I’ll keep an eye out for that.
Sec. Copeland: Actually let me add one more thing – one thing about automotive and what it does – because of the large number of employees, typically, you know, two to four thousand people, it’s like Centene in Charlotte… Centene, having 3,000 people, the annual payroll that they will be putting into the Charlotte-Mecklenburg economy is $324 million in payroll. That buys a lot of local product, a lot of services and employs a lot of people in every strata of the socio-economic level.
Brooks: Indeed it does. We actually produce annually, as you know, an annual state of the technology sector report. We’ve done this now six years in a row. Our friend Ted Abernathy and his firm are contracted to do that research and among the data points that we measure are what is the multiplier effect of a tech job in North Carolina, so we know what the average wage is and we have ways of measuring how many other jobs and how much dollar input into the economy that generates. And it’s amazing how, although the percentage of our workforce that our tech workers is fairly modest, it’s an outsized impact on the broader economy and jobs picture as you just noted for sure. On that employment note, I wanted to circle back to our discussion around unemployment and we talked a bit about the backlog and how that’s been worked through, and the surge in applications. Can you share with us or clarify for us what the structure looks like. I know that early, under normal circumstances as I understand it, if somebody were to file for unemployment, among the things that are required of them, is a limit on the weekly amount paid. There is a limit on the number of weeks that a person can be receiving that benefit, and there’s a requirement that the person demonstrate actively looking for other work and there’s some requirements around that. And there may be some other requirements… A number of those things were either waived, extended or increased in the case of the weekly benefit through federal legislation. Where are we in that right now, when do decisions have to be made about whether or not some of that will continue or expire?
Sec. Copeland: I’ll sort of go in reverse and we’ll look at what’s going with Congress now. Before the end of July this month, the $600 in the federal funds will be will come to an end. That’s going to come to a screeching halt. One only knows what we’re seeing coming from the Senate and the house in Washington now, what’s going to be done for the continuation of that. Going back to the North Carolina piece, there is an overlay of many different programs in the unemployment. It’s a very confusing overlay in how those payments work. But North Carolina is one of the lowest pay states in the country, so far as the unemployment benefits that that we pay, and the duration of the time is also not very long. But we have reached a high unemployment rate and we will see a continuation of the North Carolina unemployment piece, which will not necessarily include the $600 piece. So stay tuned and I think before the end of this month we’ll see how that plays out. I can’t imagine that Congress is going to allow all these people to be left without an income. On the other hand, there are some companies complaining that because of the overlay of the different benefits and the amount people getting an unemployment, that some people are having a hard time getting them to come back to work, so we have to work through some of those things too.
Brooks: I know that some of the press was reporting that just over 50% of those receiving the current enhanced unemployment benefits are receiving more than they were earning before, so there’s been some discussion at the federal level of even switching up and offering a payment incentive for those who go back to a paying job and what that might look like, so I think we’ll see some shifts and if not an ending of the benefits, then some sort of modification for sure.
Sec. Copeland: And we shouldn’t forget that some of the reasons for some of the money was to get the money in the economy fast.
Brooks: Very good point, I think a lot of people forget that part. This is not money that sits on the sidelines, it goes right into the economy.
Sec. Copeland: This money was spent, rapidly I believe.
Brooks: Right, right. A lot of people think of Commerce as playing a key role in attracting business, and of course it does and that’s what gets the headlines. But most net new job creation comes from existing businesses. Can you give us the elevator pitch on what is Commerce’ role in supporting existing businesses in North Carolina and what kinds of things are available to companies that are already here and might benefit from help from the state in various ways.
Sec. Copeland: I think we remain accessible to them, we’re their advocate and where they come for taxation regulation or the like. It’s also important that the executive branch works with the legislature to continue the pipeline of workforce and the environmental structure of the state. Companies definitely want a place that’s environmentally friendly and they also want a place that balances that with corporations. We’re seeing a big push now for renewable energies. We have several companies now, in the pipeline… large investments in rural areas. They want to use 100% renewable energy, and there are large users of electricity. Now, renewable doesn’t mean they necessarily have a solar farm in their backyard – you can purchase those credits. If we look at our wind energy in North Carolina, most of that is supplied by Amazon. It’s in northeastern North Carolina, and that’s through credits and the like. But we continue to work with them and their advocates. Now, we’ve worked a tremendous amount in establishing the essential business designation when the governor was sitting in the executive order. The governor considered all manufacturing and all construction as essential businesses, knowing that those would be the hardest things to restart when it comes to going forward. Unlike what Michigan did… Michigan shut manufacturing down, which actually shut Freightliner down in North Carolina because their supply chain was coming out of Michigan. So much of our manufacturing that did shudder was because of the supply chain that was cut off in other states.
Brooks: That’s a very good point, the interconnectedness of our economies you certainly even more pronounced in a case like this, where every state seems to have a different set of rules about lockdown and shutdowns.
Sec. Copeland: Michigan affected us disproportionally because of our auto parts and auto supply industry.
Brooks: Let me pick up on the question I asked you about these services or the advocacy that the department provides for existing businesses with a question that’s come in from one of our listeners. They write, “Last year, the one NC small business program was not funded. Will it be funded for this fiscal year.
Sec. Copeland: Yes.
Brooks: [Laughs] And what is that?
Sec. Copeland: In fact, the chairman of that committee has just left my office. The funding, some of that is to be determined as we’re talking right now but we are fully confident that it’s gonna be fully funded this year.
Brooks: Okay, I’ll ask you a general question then I’m going to ask you a forecasting question. The general question is, are there some things that the tech sector should do to collaborate with the state in enhancing North Carolina’s strength as a tech and innovation friendly state? There are policies of course, there are grant programs and incentives… but as a sector, are there things that you can think of that have been helpful to you or that would be helpful to the state as we partner to come out of this in a strong way and, in particular, for the tech sector.
Sec. Copeland: Well, I think your advocacy… Brooks, I was one of the founding member. I was on your board when the Technology Association under a different name … well it was back in the ‘90s. I think it’s easy for North Carolina sometimes to take the tech industry for granted and they forget that basically IBM, when they came here in the 60s, as a part of John Kennedy and Terry Sanford and the CEO of IBM and Luther Hodges who became the US Secretary of Commerce… it was basically the beginning, which transformed us from the Ford…. At the time we were the 48th poor state in the country at that time… And now it’s where we are today. I think your advocacy… it’s imperative that you, not saying that you don’t, but it’s imperative that you remain active, you remain in the forefront, that you stay on top of the incentive programs, and make sure that the legislators in the urban areas continue to understand that the urban-rural divide is something that’s a constant conversation. And that perhaps we should keep the incentives that are working well in the urban areas and look at different things for the rural areas, but sometimes the tech industry is not represented as much robust in rural counties because of workforce issues, so rural issues become part of your issue too because we need to take care of those so we don’t get the Robin Hood, that we take from the rich to give to the poor, which I think we went through that in 2017 when I first arrived. It was a really big issue in the legislature. I think thanks to your conversion and your advocacy, some of that has sort of been tapped down, but it could easily be, I think, come back to the forefront again. I think as you continue to be the advocates for education, K through 12 in particular, but the universities and community colleges and the technical and engineering programs that we have should continue to stay in the forefront. One of the issues right now I think that would be very helpful to be heard with our congressional legislation is the visas for students. The tech visas that are coming in, and the H-1B visas too… these are very important. Not only is it a huge economic driver in North Carolina and all these students coming in, but they also help fund a lot of our programs that engineering and technology programs that may not be able to be fully funded without the revenues that they bring in. And I’m particularly worried, because I’m working with some of the universities…Duke, NC State, Carolina and many of the others to look at those issues now… We’re particularly worried about that, you saw the latest thing that came out about students that are taking virtual courses will not be able to come back to U.S…. Also I’m sure you are familiar that the legislature before last, we cannot give incentives anyone anymore to H-1B visa applicants, and that was passed. Those type of things send the wrong signal to the world that we’re open for business and that we’re at the top of the technology ladder.
Brooks: That’s very true, I’m especially worried about those student issues that you mentioned. So much of the innovation and the people who are entrepreneurial and really are successful and have been successful here and built companies here and invented things here, we certainly want to welcome them not and not repel them. That would be an unwise, long-term strategy for sure.
Sec. Copeland: But I think the house is on fire and we need to get on that issue immediately.
Brooks: Yeah, we’ll see how that plays out. We’re about at the end of our time so I’ll ask you the predictive question I mentioned earlier. There was a poll we’ve done that indicated what tech leaders think about the timing and the shape of recovery. We threw in an extra question this last time, which was, “If someone gave you tickets to a large-scale event that you would ordinarily welcome the chance to go to, whether that’s a sporting event, concert, large gala dinner or something of that sort… What’s the earliest month you would be personally comfortable going?” And, 53% of the respondents did not pick a month, they chose one of the last two options on the list. One of them was “not until 2021” and the other was “not until there’s a vaccine,” and that could be the same: 2021. So basically more than half would not be comfortable going to a large-scale event for the balance of this year, most likely. So as I asked you to look ahead, I’m curious what you and your advisors and the legislature’s own economists are thinking about the economy in North Carolina, particularly over the balance of 2020 and moving into 2021. Are we going to be different than the rest of the country in some key ways, or will we really track similarly to the rest of the country?
Sec. Copeland: I think we’ll be different from the rest of the country, at least in the economic development perspective. I think Governor Cooper’s measured responses, well, continuing to balance the dislocations in the economy are going to continue. Many international companies are looking at us as a secure place to do business and a safe place to locate, that’s going to continue. Unfortunately, the virus is dictating our schedule and I’m not sure anyone knows, but I think if any state is going to be on top of it, North Carolina will. We’re in constant conversations with the scientific community, the medical community, and all of our life sciences communities. Much of it’s being developed here… which we’re ecstatic about. But I think we may be in to this for the long haul. However, I think we’ll learn how to live with this, we’ll learn how to prosper with this, and a year from now hopefully we’ll be looking at this in our rearview mirror.
Brooks: Well let’s hope so, let’s hope so.
Sec. Copeland: And I don’t want to miss the Duke/Carolina game right.
Brooks: Well, we’re at the end of our time. Tony, this has been a great conversation. I know it went in several directions, but I think it was very informative and has great insights from you. Thank you for being our guest today and for your service to North Carolina and to all of us before.
