Jobs4TN a Rousing Success?

That is what the folks at ECD, whose job it is to implement the Jobs4TN plan advocated by the governor, are saying in a report on 2011 economic activity.  Last week, Politifact got into some hot water for mischaracterizing the President's statements on jobs, claiming that he was taking credit for private sector job growth when there was scant evidence of that actually happening.  Well, I think the case is a bit more clear for the Governor's administration using better job growth numbers in 2011 as vindication for his recently implemented Jobs4TN plan:

The results of the Jobs4TN strategy are tangible. In 2011, job creation in Tennessee hit its highest mark of the last five years and since the onset of the global recession. ECD projects and private sector growth tracked by the department accounted for 28,535 jobs created in Tennessee in 2011 and more than $4 billion in investment.

They made similar claims later in the report, stating:

As a result of this year of transformation, ECD reached a peak it had not achieved since before the onset the global recession. Over 2011, ECD projects and other job growth in Tennessee’s healthy business climate resulted in 28,535 new jobs created in the state.

So, did reorganizing the Department of ECD to cut jobs, staff was reduced from 210 to 126 according to the report, really result in all these jobs gains statewide? Or, rather, was this the culmination of long-standing proposals for corporate relocations, expansions, and the overall improving economic situation?

Did GM and Amazon expand locations because of this ingenious strategy or some new-found lax regulations, or was this the result of years of hardwork by the Bredesen administration, local authorities, and in the case of GM, the Obama administration?