EDITORIAL: Thank you, Granr County Economic Growth Council

Executive Director Tim Eckerle said the Growth Council intends to continue the practice and making such information available, as long as we ask for the information and the request is “reasonable.”

The term “reasonable” is of course bothersome as it is a word that is infinitely subjective and a possible escape hatch from a promise to continue what we see as a the civic duty of the Council to inform the public how it spends tax dollars. But let’s not worry with that now. As the Bible says, each day has enough trouble of its own. Today we are expressing our thanks the honorable people who work on and for the Council. We believe they toil long hours to do what they think is in the best interest of the community.

And there is no doubt that economic development is a difficult and complicated job.

We will continue to press for legislation that requires local economic development agencies receiving public monies to provide a public account for their spending. And we ask our County Council to take a more active role in providing oversight of the Growth Council, which now automatically receives .03 percent of the economic development income tax.

Frankly, we found no persuasive arguments to keeping the books closed. Remember, we are not talking about revealing recruitment targets or efforts. We think the fear of openness has root in concerns of what would follow with regard to the public’s ability to somehow stop the spending they did not like. That would in turn cripple economic development as we know it.

We’ve made clear how we feel about the method of economic development as practiced in Grant County for the last several years. Those views haven’t changed.

Capitalism driven by private profit with private finance used to do that remarkably well and perhaps will again.

In the meantime, we commend our Growth Council for doing the right thing and we will be asking for the audit of the Growth Council for the year 2012.