“Economic Development.”
Trot it out, and apparently everyone is supposed to stop thinking and climb aboard the bandwagon.
Some people are remarkably generous with what their neighbors stand to lose. They will turn your home into a resource farm for multinational corporations, then call the carnage “progress.”
Economic development can be good or bad. It depends on who benefits, who pays, and what happens to the community already there.
A private payday does not become a public good because someone puts it in a glossy presentation.
People recite investment totals and job projections as though impressive numbers settle the matter. Those numbers do not tell us whether the deal is sound, who absorbs the costs, or whether the community comes out ahead. They certainly do not tell us how much control residents will retain over the place they call home.
A serious accounting would distinguish permanent jobs from construction work, identify who pays for roads and utility upgrades, and weigh the effects on existing businesses and neighboring homes. It would explain which promises are enforceable and what recourse the community has if they are broken. Until those and other questions are answered, an investment announcement tells us what someone intends to spend—not what the community stands to gain.
A community can be plundered and still produce impressive economic statistics.
A billion dollars can finance a good project or a very expensive mistake. The number supplies scale. Judgment must supply the rest.
A community can need jobs, investment, and opportunity and still be offered a rotten deal. Economic necessity is not a license to plunder. Nor does the existence of willing local beneficiaries establish that everyone else should welcome the bargain.
Yet too many officials seem eager to join the developer’s public-relations staff. They repeat the projections. They plead the company’s case. They warn their own constituents against asking too much. By the time negotiations should begin, they have already conceded that the project must happen.
A corporation could hardly ask for a more accommodating party across the table.
Carpetbaggers have always appreciated a helpful local escort—someone to introduce them as benefactors, smooth their passage, and assure the neighbors that whatever they surrender will be worth it.
A community is more than a collection of assets waiting for someone else to monetize. People have homes, livelihoods, obligations, and generations of attachment to a place. Those things deserve consideration before officials commit them to somebody else’s vision of progress.
The purpose of government is not to help lawmakers build political résumés, cultivate business connections, or arrange their next career opportunity.
Political careers can prosper on announcements long before the public knows whether the underlying deals will succeed. The photographs are immediate. The bills arrive later.
Their advancement is not our prosperity.
These concerns become especially serious when the deal involves expanding governmental power.
Act 576 gives appointed industrial development authorities the power of eminent domain. Issue 3 would authorize economic development districts with substantial taxing and borrowing powers, with important details to be supplied through subsequent legislation.
That is a lot of power. Calling it “economic development” does not tell us who controls it, who pays for it, or who answers when it goes wrong.
A jobs forecast cannot excuse a bad deal. A ribbon cutting cannot justify taking property, raising taxes, or handing unelected boards authority without adequate public oversight.
We elect representatives to ask hard questions, protect the public, and own their decisions. Handing broad powers to appointed boards while bowing to developers is not leadership. It is surrender.
An appointment is not a blank check. A new layer of government is not accountability. Officials cannot claim every success while treating every failure as somebody else’s decision.
And conservatives who abandon limited government whenever a developer arrives should retire the speeches. Constitutional restraint is not a slogan to display when convenient. It is a test of whether anyone in power is willing to say “no.”
The people who live in a community are entitled to judge a proposal by what it will do to their lives and their home. They do not owe anyone applause because a developer sees an opportunity and a politician sees a ribbon cutting.
“Economic Development” does not relieve elected officials of the obligation to think—or the responsibility to govern.
“Economic Development.”
Those two words are supposed to end the discussion. They still haven’t answered the questions.
