Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mary Burke is shown with moderator Mike Gousha during a forum Tuesday at Marquette University. Credit: Mark Hoffman

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Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mary Burke laid out her vision for Wisconsin's economy Tuesday, releasing her jobs plan one day after incumbent Gov. Scott Walker signed a tax-cut package that is central to his re-election bid.

Seeking to counter the Republican governor's message of an improving state economy and budget, the former bicycle executive presented Wisconsin as a state that is lagging behind the nation in recovering from the recession.

The state is creating jobs at half the rate of the rest of the country and trailing in capturing investment while wages in Wisconsin fall twice as fast, Burke's report says.

The plan released by Burke's campaign late Monday night said the state should increase the number of college graduates by helping make student loans more manageable. The plan also calls for pouring $80 million more into venture capital programs and fostering a number of clusters of companies working in niches such as heavy-equipment manufacturing, food processing and clean-water technology.

Walker's recent $541 million tax cut and Burke's take on the economy give voters an early glimpse into what both candidates call the key issue in the race — how to create more jobs in Wisconsin.

Burke, a former Trek Bicycle Corp. executive and commerce secretary under former Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle, also released a video touting the jobs plan Tuesday.

The rollout of the jobs plan also comes before the publication of a major poll by the Marquette Law School on Wednesday that may help define the race going forward.

During an interview with journalist Mike Gousha at Marquette University, Burke went into details about her proposals.

At one point, she held up Walker's 2010 jobs plan and said: "This is four pages. Now, I've seen eighth-grade term papers that frankly have more work put into them.

"We're talking about our future, and it deserves some serious thinking and some real detail and real plans."

In compiling her plan, Burke said, she talked to hundreds of people over the past few months, including education and business leaders.

Walker spokesman Tom Evenson said the state has created more than 100,000 jobs and 17,000 new businesses during Walker's tenure.

"Mary Burke's plan looks familiar because Governor Walker has already taken the lead on policies aimed at closing Wisconsin's skills gap, lowering tuition costs and improving the state's business climate," Evenson said.

"At the same time, Burke's plan contains policies that would kill our recovery and take us back to the days of billion-dollar deficits, double-digit tax increases and record job losses. Voters simply can't trust Mary Burke on jobs."

Burke's report doesn't make a direct reference to Walker's promise that the state would create 250,000 jobs during his four-year term or make an explicit job creation promise of her own. With three years of Walker's term on the books so far, the state has added an estimated 103,400 private sector jobs, about 41% of that mark.

"My goal is to have a top 10, thriving economy," Burke told reporters. "And we have benchmarks throughout the plan."

Those metrics were:

■Job growth in Wisconsin compared with neighboring states.

■Wage increases for state workers. Wages for Wisconsin workers average $41,920 a year, or about $3,870 less than the national average of $45,790, Burke's report finds, citing federal statistics.

■Amount of venture capital available to early stage companies and the number of businesses being created each year.

■High school, technical school and college graduation rates, along with the percentages of those graduates staying in the state.

■The share of their income that families and businesses are paying in state taxes and fees.

Gubernatorial candidates like Walker and Burke have long sought to position themselves as a kind of job creator in chief. But economists are usually skeptical of governors' ability to strongly affect job creation amid a global economy.

Take, for instance, federal statistics showing the growth in the economies of all 50 states in 2012. Once a couple of outlier states like North Dakota and Texas are dropped from the list, the inflation-adjusted growth rates of all the other states fell within a relatively small span of 4 percentage points, from 3.9% to minus 0.1%.

Still, candidates and voters are always hoping to do a little better than the past. In 2012, the value of the goods and services produced in Wisconsin grew at 1.5%, slower than the national average of 2.5%.

In her plan, Burke argues for focusing the state's job creation efforts on clusters of companies in specific industries such as paper and printing or Milwaukee's freshwater research where Wisconsin has strong potential rather than on individual firms. She said the state should target agency staff, worker training and efforts to commercialize University of Wisconsin research on these groups of companies.

The state should boost higher education efforts by providing more state money to universities, creating a new institution proposed by Democrats to help students refinance their college loans and raising the college tax deduction to $10,424 from the current level of $6,943. She also would allow student loan payments to be deducted from state income taxes.

To help business start-ups, the state should quadruple its venture capital program from $30 million to $120 million over four years, allow the fund to invest in biotech companies and boost another program to spur angel investments, the plan says. Burke specifically ruled out state programs making use of certified capital companies, or CAPCOs, which have come under scrutiny for their poor past performance.

Finally, the state needs to boost exports and create a strong business climate by holding the line on taxes and regulations and providing for gay marriage in the state, according to the report.

The Republican Party of Wisconsin debuted a web page Tuesday criticizing Burke's record as commerce secretary. The party's executive director, Joe Fadness, criticized Burke for saying she wanted to bring jobs back to Wisconsin from overseas, saying that Trek had engaged in the practice of outsourcing.

"Ironically, Mary Burke's plan criticizes outsourcing, begging the question if she will follow her own advice and bring Trek's 800 employees overseas back to the United States," Fadness said.

Burke responded, "I'm running for governor. I'm not the CEO of Trek. But as governor I want to talk to all Wisconsin companies and see if we can find possibilities where they can bring jobs back to Wisconsin."

Burke discussed several key education issues in her appearance at Marquette.

Asked if she favored Milwaukee's mayor assuming control of Milwaukee Public Schools, Burke said, "I really think that this is the time not to be fighting that battle..."

Burke, who has said she would cut the limited statewide expansion of vouchers, also dismissed a toned-down school accountability bill that passed the Assembly last week for having "no consequences in it."

Jason Stein reported for this story in Madison and Bill Glauber in Milwaukee.