“We’ve never lost a deal because of tax structure,” says Dave Welsh, senior vice-president of TREO, Tucson Regional Economic Opportunities Inc. — the outfit tasked with bringing new business to town.

Welsh said Arizona’s and Tucson’s taxes simply don’t chase off potential new employers. But he went on to say that the lack of “a skilled workforce” definitely does scare off companies sniffing around Tucson as a place to set up shop.

Welsh made his remarks Friday morning at the annual retreat of the Pima County Workforce Investment Board, a volunteer group of business leaders and private and public agencies concerned with the quality of local employment. The group advises the Pima County Board of Supervisors on workforce policy and oversees local employment efforts funded through the federal Workforce Investment Act of 1998.

Welsh told the business execs and employment-related agency folks that TREO’s phones had gone virtually dead from October through March, but that in the last 45 days calls from out-of-state companies interested in relocating or setting up shop in the Tucson area had been picking up.

Also, he said a survey of 170 local companies anticipating the filling of 2200 jobs in the coming 12 months showed that 45 percent of those positions would require a Bachelor’s Degree or a high degree of training.