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GREENSBORO — Gov. Bev Perdue  told more than 700 business leaders that her next three years in office will be defined by one word: jobs.

Speaking at the Greensboro Partnership’s annual dinner at Koury Convention Center, Perdue outlined a few specific proposals, hinted at more to come and spent the majority of a 45-minute speech talking about how state government would foster job creation.

“The No. 1 priority for this state and for all of our people is to keep jobs and grow jobs,” Perdue said, adding, “I am and will continue to be known as the jobs governor.”

That declaration is a break with her predecessors going back for decades who anchored their tenures on support for public schools and colleges. The first-term Democrat, likewise, focused on education when she campaigned in 2008.

But the nationwide recession and double-digit unemployment rewrote her priorities. Government’s ability to pay for its programs, her viability as a candidate in 2012, and the prospects of everyday families are tied to whether the economy can put people back to work.

Perdue has two more speeches lined up today . At one, she will focus on education proposals, and later in the day, she will focus again on the economy when she speaks to the Charlotte Chamber .

“Jobs, jobs and more jobs have to define every day of work for me,” she said.

To that end, Perdue said she would remain engaged in business recruitment and “aggressively” use incentives to recruit “the big gorillas,” major companies that create hundreds of jobs.

But the new proposals she talked about focused on small businesses, including a tax credit to reward homegrown small companies. She said the state also would use federal recovery act money to expand the “Biz Boost” program that has been tested in Charlotte to communities across the state.

Biz Boost provides advice from experts, help with obtaining credit and even help paying salaries to small businesses. The program “prevents people from losing their jobs in the first place.”

Republican lawmakers in the audience were skeptical of Perdue’s plans. Sen. Phil Berger , a Rockingham County Republican, said that rather than targeting tax breaks, the state should work to lower the overall tax rate for everyone.

“The track record and the history that governmental officials have in picking the next great thing is not so good,” Berger said.

Regarding Biz Boost, Berger said, “I’m not so sure that government paying the salaries of private sector businesses is really a good long-term program for us to get into, and I don’t think on a short-term basis it’s necessarily what we need.

“How do you pick which businesses you get involved in? How do you decide this is one that we’re going to pay their employees and this is one we’re not going to?”

The governor put a name to her signature education program — Career and College: Ready, Set, Go. But she delayed sharing specifics until a joint session of North Carolina’s Educational Governing Boards — a meeting of the state’s top public education officials — today  in Kannapolis.

She said the effort would focus on measuring the progress of at-risk children and keeping students in schools, and she pledged to raise the graduation rate by 10 points in the next three years.

But speaking about education, Perdue came back to the economy and jobs. “I believe that the business community, you all, need to help North Carolina define what it is that you really want a high school graduate to know ... or what it is you think a community college or college graduate needs in terms of a skill set to work with,” Perdue said.

The third priority on Perdue’s list was “setting government straight,” a reference to cleaning up scandals that have made headlines during the past several years and have consumed the legacy  former Gov. Mike Easley , who is under investigation by federal prosecutors.

“We will focus ... on reform. We will crack down on corruption, strengthen the ethics, and find waste, fraud and abuse,” Perdue said. Her pledge covered not only intentional wrongdoing by  government officials, but cleaning up ineffective programs.

Greensboro Republican Rep. John Blust  was skeptical. “I’ve heard it said time and time again, and I never see any action,” he said, pointing out that his reform-minded bills have consistently stalled in the General Assembly.

Contact Mark Binker at (919) 832-5549 or mark.binker@news-record.com