We are pleased the upcoming session of the Indiana General Assembly will include a serious attempt at reforming the way economic development efforts are conducted in the name of Indiana taxpayers.
Sen. Mike Delph, R-Carmel is working with Sen. Jim Banks, R-Columbia City, to develop legislation that would compel the Indiana Economic Development Corp. to actually report on how many jobs are created by their efforts, not just promised at press conferences.
Banks, with the support of Delph, is also developing language for the bill that would open up local economic development groups, often private by way of nonprofit status, to public inspection of how they spend public dollars.
This is simple, good government. The IEDC and local economic development groups are not conducting clandestine operations for national security. They are simply trying to lure capitalists to town. We need to be able to follow our tax dollars with the public invited along and able to make a judgment if those dollars are being used wisely by anyone spending them.
In Iowa, the state economic development organization actually has a public hearing on proposed development deals — including incentives — before matters are finalized and elected officials pat themselves on the back for “creating jobs.”
Maybe something along those lines could work here.
Tad DeHaven, a former fiscal watchdog within the Mitch Daniels administration, who now serves as a budget analyst with the Cato Institute, recalls trying to hold the IEDC accountable for reaching efficiency goals other state agencies had to meet. But there really weren’t any.
He said the IEDC was mostly a political apparatus designed to give incentives and produce events at which politicians could claim economic victory by making job announcements. It really wasn’t about developing an environment for business expansion.
DeHaven obtained a 2009 email exchange between Mitch Roob, former head of the IEDC and Teresa Lynn Voors, then commissioner of Indiana Department of Workforce Development in response to concerns by the mayor of Kokomo that the IEDC was primarily concerned with bring jobs to Indianapolis. “I assured him that wasn’t the case and explained that most employers come to IEDC already knowing where they want to locate,” Voors wrote.
If employers already know where they want to be, why are we paying for incentives to attract them to where they already intend to locate?
Reform legislation is drawing the support of Democrats and Republicans with both labor union and tea partier backing. It is bipartisan and it is an obvious good idea.
Our local campaign for increased transparency with the Grant County Economic Growth Council has yielded the 2011 financial audit of the Growth Council. The executive committee of the Growth Council recently provided those documents and we very much appreciate their decision in support of openness.
We are examining those records and expect to deliver a report to our readers soon.
Our effort in Grant County only underscores need for reform at the state level. We place resources in the area of economic development because we all very much want our communities to become prosperous places of full employment.
Clearly what has been done the past couple of decades in taxpayer-funded and government-driven economic development isn’t working across the state and a new approach — or at least a less expensive approach, needs to be tried. But we can’t make those public policy decisions unless we, all of us who have an interest, truly know what we are doing now and what results are being generated.
Please contact your local state legislators and urge them to support transparency in economic development. We need to maintain public control of public tax dollars.