You would think that, with all the public funds being spent on state and local economic development, the controversy over incentives, and the ambiguous and often negative scholarly opinion regarding many popular programs, tough questions about economic development's theory, goals, and strategies would be commonplace.
But, instead, in the real world of economic policymaking, economic development is an example of a "Teflon" policy and practice. Critique and allegations and fundamental questions don't seem to stick. Policies are often cut a lot of slack. The weakest and least documented of anecdotes about what some other community supposedly does with great results or a single testimony of one business person about the virtue of an area's incentive program will almost always defeat the contrary opinions voiced in 100 scholarly studies.
To question the use of certain conventional development tools, to worry that growth is actually overwhelming a community and should be slowed and more planned, to point out that most trickle-down economic development fail to help the ultimate beneficiaries from development programs – the jobless and working poor, the underemployed, the dislocated worker, the ex-offender, new immigrant, the racial or ethnic minority – is to seemingly speak heresy. It's as if you have let people know that you are an atheist, a commie, a serial killer, or an Islamic terrorist.
Jobs, jobs, jobs. These three words veritably hypnotize the unwary into looking on the best side of almost any proposed heavily subsidized project. When jobs are the policy for debate and consent, it's ready, aim, firefire, aim. In this state and others, it is common practice to devote only a day in the a legislature to approve hundreds of millions of incentive requests, while the same amount of time will be focused on a few million agency travel dollars.
So, what is the answer? Constant repetition of the following may be needed:
- Good government is good economic development.
- There is no free lunch. In financing an incentive, you are taking monies from the private economy and claiming they get a higher return than leaving them be.
- Adopt a long-term perspective. Could other public investments, such as schools, yield societal benefits?
- A savvy investor sometimes says "no".