Most of us have heard this general definition of insanity: Doing that which doesn’t work and, after seeing it fail, keep on doing it while being amazed anew with each failure.
Which immediately brings us to the practice of economic development, in Indiana generally and Grant County specifically.
Michael Hicks, director of the Ball State Center for Business and Economic Research, spoke last week to Marion Rotary Club and clarified an overriding problem that has beset our community.
Traditional economic development, which we have been trying for decades, doesn’t work anymore. Yet we keep going back to the well trying to attract employers, often low wage employers, by offering incentives of the type other communities offer. During the years of the Seybold administration in Marion, the community doubled down on this method.
When that happened, that which previously didn’t work very well suddenly became outright damaging as the city plunged into Tax Increment Financing debt and our development projects devolved into far-flung, hyperactive schemes in which participants were shielded from the consequences of their questionable judgements and actions paid for by other people. Criticism was stifled because whether one sat on the Redevelopment Commission Board or an editorial board, nobody wants to come out against “economic development.”
But, painfully, it wasn’t working. Following our traditional line of development action, there wasn’t much to develop into anymore. The world changed in the past 25 years or so. As Hicks laid out, the “footloose” jobs that can be attracted by economic incentives are few and not what they were when the manufacturing industry seemed to create almost as many well paying jobs as it did cars, tires, televisions and air conditioners. Manufacturing doesn’t need people like it did and it never will. As Hicks noted, Indiana manufacturing had its best, most productive year ever in 2015, not in the '60s and '70s when factory employment delivered good times for many thousands of employees.
Service jobs, which is more than fast food, have taken the place of those manufacturing jobs. The economy of the 21st Century centers around community and place, not around factories. Employers are going to where people are and want to be. People are not moving, as they once did, for their jobs. Now, 70 percent of the time, people are moving for good schools and public services.
We have jobs in Grant County. We don’t have people. We are losing people.
So we need to develop our schools and public services. We need to be a place where crime is low, the roads are well maintained and the streets are clean. We need good government. In other words, we need to perfect the place we are. People will come.
Once thought to go hand-in-hand, we can no longer afford to do both traditional economic development and and invest in quality of life. Business attraction is second only to public schools in the investment made by local governments in Indiana. That’s absurd, especially at a time when communities are desperate for public safety dollars.
The trouble is, it takes time to turn it all around. It can’t be done in a single city administration’s term or two terms or even three. There is no TIF bond that will take care of it. We need to keep cleaning things up, litterally and figuratively, and make our community a place where people want to live and raise their families. Wealth follows people.