County Commission Chief Tells Business Leaders: Hiring a Consultant Is Not a Rebuke

MOBILE — Mobile County Commission President Mike Dean went before a meeting of Forward Mobile in late May 2005 with a single message to deliver, and he delivered it plainly: the county’s decision to hire an outside economic development consultant was not a vote of no confidence in the Mobile Area Chamber of Commerce. “I let them know that our hiring a consultant doesn’t mean we are not going to fund the chamber,” Dean said afterward. “That should not be read as a rejection of the chamber and its work. I wanted them to hear that out of my mouth rather than them hearing whatever they might hear from others.”

The meeting came at a tense moment for Mobile’s economic development establishment. Forward Mobile, the region’s public-private partnership for economic growth, had long relied on the Chamber of Commerce as its primary implementation arm. The Chamber’s economic development staff, led by veterans of the shipyard and aerospace recruitment efforts of the 1990s, had deep relationships with site selectors, corporate real estate executives, and state officials. Dean’s decision to bring in an outside firm suggested, to some observers, that the Chamber’s performance had been found wanting — a reading Dean worked aggressively to refute.

The Contract That Caused the Stir

Two weeks earlier, Dean and Commissioner Stephen Nodine had voted to award a $45,000 contract to Competitive Strategies Group, an Atlanta firm headed by Jay Garner, to study the local economy and recommend a plan for attracting new business. Garner was no stranger to Mobile; he had directed the chamber’s own economic development efforts from 1985 to 1994. Competitive Strategies brought in McCallum Sweeney Consulting of Greenville, South Carolina, a site-selection specialist. McCallum Sweeney had been involved in the searches for the Boeing 7E7 plant, which stayed in Washington state, and the Vought project, which went to Charleston. Brookley Field had been in the running for both.

The Boeing 7E7 (later designated the 787 Dreamliner) and Vought Aircraft competitions were the defining economic development battles of the early 2000s for Mobile. Brookley Field, the former Air Force base turned aerospace complex, had the infrastructure — runways, hangars, skilled workforce — to host major assembly operations. The Chamber’s team had worked both projects intensively, coordinating with the governor’s office, the Alabama Development Office, and local elected officials. Losing both was a blow to the region’s confidence and to the Chamber’s credibility with the business leaders who funded it. Dean’s contract with Competitive Strategies was, in part, a response to that disappointment — an independent assessment of why Mobile kept finishing second.

Commissioner Sam Jones Opposed the Hiring

Commissioner Sam Jones, then a candidate for mayor of Mobile in that summer’s municipal elections, opposed the hiring. Some community leaders read the contract as a splintering of the area’s economic development effort — a breach that might complicate pending recruitment deals. The concern was sharpened by a prickly session weeks earlier in which the newly elected Nodine had clashed with Forward Mobile over its approach. Nodine, a businessman elected in 2004, had campaigned on a platform of government efficiency and private-sector discipline. He viewed the Chamber’s economic development operation as insufficiently metrics-driven and overly reliant on relationships rather than data.

The clash reflected a deeper philosophical divide. The Chamber’s model was relational: build trust with site selectors, maintain a constant presence at industry conferences, leverage personal networks to get Mobile on shortlists. Nodine’s model was analytical: benchmark Mobile against competitor communities, identify specific gaps in workforce, infrastructure, and incentives, and target investments to close those gaps. Both approaches had merit; both had blind spots. The relational model could mask structural weaknesses with good feelings. The analytical model could produce beautiful reports that sat on shelves because no one had the relationships to act on them. Dean’s decision to hire Garner — a figure who bridged both worlds, having run the Chamber’s relational operation and now consulting analytically — was an attempt to synthesize the two.

The Case for Self-Examination

Dean’s argument was that results matter more than feelings, and that opportunities do not wait. Every organization, he suggested, benefits from periodic self-examination; without it, complacency sets in. The Chamber’s economic development budget, funded by private membership dues and public contracts, had grown steadily through the 1990s and early 2000s. Its staff had expanded. Its marketing materials had become slicker. But the wins — the major announcements of new plants, new headquarters, new thousands of jobs — had not kept pace. The ThyssenKrupp steel mill, announced in 2007 for Calvert, was still in the future. The Airbus assembly line, announced in 2012 for Brookley, was even further out. In 2005, the pipeline looked thin.

Competitive Strategies Group’s scope of work included a comprehensive economic base analysis — identifying Mobile’s industry clusters, workforce strengths and gaps, infrastructure assets and liabilities, and competitive position relative to peer communities in the Gulf South. McCallum Sweeney’s site-selection expertise would translate that analysis into a target industry strategy: which sectors to pursue, what incentives to offer, what site preparations to prioritize. The $45,000 fee was modest compared to the millions Mobile had spent on incentive packages for Boeing and Vought. Dean framed it as an insurance policy — a small investment to ensure the next big bet was placed on the right hand.

Forward Mobile’s Role and Reaction

Forward Mobile, the public-private partnership created in the 1990s to coordinate regional economic development, occupied an awkward position. Its board included Chamber leaders, county commissioners, mayors, utility executives, and university presidents. Its mission was to align the region’s disparate economic development actors — the Chamber, the Alabama State Port Authority, the Mobile Airport Authority, the two-county industrial development authorities — around a common strategy. In practice, the Chamber had been the dominant voice. Dean’s consultant hire challenged that dominance, implicitly arguing that the coordinator should not also be the primary implementer.

Forward Mobile’s leadership, to their credit, did not reject the consultant outright. They agreed to share data, participate in interviews, and review the draft recommendations. But they also made clear that the Chamber’s existing work — the industry relationships, the marketing collateral, the site selector familiarity — would not be discarded. The goal, as Dean articulated it, was not replacement but augmentation: give the Chamber better intelligence, and let them execute with sharper aim.

Broader Context: Alabama’s Economic Development Model

The episode illuminated a structural tension in Alabama’s economic development model. The state relies heavily on a public-private partnership where the Alabama Department of Commerce sets the overall strategy, but local chambers and industrial authorities do the ground game. The state offers incentives — tax abatements, workforce training grants, infrastructure funding — but the local partners must assemble the site, the workforce pipeline, and the community pitch. When a project like Boeing or Vought is in play, the state takes the lead, but the local team must be ready to deliver the details that close the deal.

Mobile’s challenge was that its local team — the Chamber — had been built for an earlier era, when shipbuilding and paper mills drove the economy. The new economy — aerospace composites, advanced materials, digital infrastructure — required different skills, different data, different networks. Garner’s firm, and McCallum Sweeney, represented that new skill set. The question was whether Mobile’s established leadership could integrate the new approach without losing the relational capital that had taken decades to build. Dean’s bet was that they could, and that the alternative — continuing to finish second — was unacceptable.

Outcome and Legacy

Competitive Strategies Group delivered its report in the fall of 2005. Its findings were blunt: Mobile’s workforce training system was fragmented, its site readiness for large industrial projects was inconsistent, its incentive packages were competitive but not differentiated, and its marketing lacked a coherent brand. The report recommended a restructuring of the region’s economic development governance — a single entity with clear accountability, professional staff, and a unified budget. It also identified target sectors: aerospace maintenance and modification, shipbuilding and repair, specialty chemicals, and maritime logistics.

The report did not immediately restructure Mobile’s economic development apparatus. The Chamber remained the primary player, Forward Mobile continued as the coordinating body, and the county commission maintained its consultant relationship. But the report’s language and recommendations seeded changes that unfolded over the next decade. The Alabama Department of Commerce, under Governor Riley and later Governor Bentley, pushed for regional consolidation of economic development authority. The Mobile Area Chamber of Commerce reorganized its economic development division, hiring specialists in target sectors and investing in data analytics. The county commission, the city of Mobile, and the city of Saraland eventually formed a joint economic development authority — a step toward the unified structure the report envisioned.

For Dean, the consultant hire was a moment of political risk that became a signature of his commission presidency. He had challenged the region’s most respected business institution, weathered the criticism, and produced a document that shaped the conversation for years. When ThyssenKrupp broke ground in Calvert in 2007, and when Airbus announced its Brookley assembly line in 2012, the strategies those wins reflected — target sector focus, site preparation, workforce alignment — echoed the Competitive Strategies recommendations. Dean, by then term-limited out of the commission, could claim a share of the credit. The consultant’s report had not won the projects, but it had helped Mobile ask the right questions before the opportunities arrived.