By Tom Sgouros in
RIFuture.org
Earlier this month, the Rhode Island Foundation held a big
conference that said it was intended to generate ideas for moving the state’s
economy forward. Yesterday, I received a note about the “New Leaders,” a group
purportedly about bringing new ideas to the management of our state. (This
is apparently a different group from the “New Leaders Council” though it’s hard
to tell from the rhetoric.)
The Rhode Island Public Expenditure Council put out a report
last week about its new ideas for reforming the state’s economic development
apparatus. All these new ideas! Sounds great, no? Well, in a word,
no.
What’s the problem with new ideas, you might ask? Isn’t our
poor state in dire need of some?
Well, yes and no. There are a million ways to change the way
government does business, and hundreds of thousands of them would make our
state a better and more prosperous society. But of those million ideas, there
are only a paltry few that won’t gore someone’s ox when transformed into actual
policy changes.
Now I think there are plenty of oxen out there that we would do
well to gore, repeatedly. For example, I happen to think that the state and all
its cities and towns pay too much for the financial services they need and that
there are plenty of more economical ways to get those services that would
benefit our state’s economy, too. But there are bond counsels, investment
advisers, bankers, and tax credit brokers out there who would likely disagree
with me, some strenuously.
Or we could stand to tax the wealthy of our state a little bit
more. These “job creators” have created precious few jobs in exchange for the
hundreds of millions of dollars of tax breaks we’ve awarded them over the past
15 years.
Or perhaps we could look into ways to discourage the kinds of
suburban development that cost so much to service, or at least make the
developers pay the true costs to our communities.
Or how about just guaranteeing that children in our poor cities
have the same opportunities in their public schools as the children in the rich
suburbs? That’s not a new idea, but it’s a good one.
There are plenty more ideas like this, but rather a lot of them
have the disadvantage of inconveniencing some folks at the top of the heap:
bankers, lawyers, real estate developers, rich people.
Many of those same people have their own list of ideas, many
entries in which are different from mine. They routinely present them in
anodyne language, calling them “tools” for example, or “innovations,” or “new
ideas.” Unfortunately, they are often the same old oppression and
exploitation, with a different label.
For example, you routinely hear that cities and towns need
“tools” to control their costs. Well, yes, in a world where those cities and
towns aren’t getting the state support they need to pay for state-required
services, they obviously need to be relieved of the requirements or given more
money.
The Assembly’s refusal to face that choice honestly has already
led to one bankrupt city and will likely lead to more before long. But the
“tools” in this case are not as morally neutral as the word would suggest.
Most of the components — cutting pay, cutting pensions, cutting
jobs — are just ways to turn decent jobs into poor ones, and to lower the level
of services we get. But calling the proposals “taking away pay and benefits
from workers especially those in the poor cities” or “paying teachers less”
doesn’t sell as well as “tools.”
Admitting that these “tools” will exacerbate the difference of
opportunity in our schools, putting the kids in the poor districts even farther
behind the kids in the wealthy districts just isn’t as pleasant as looking at
the nice effect the tools would have on budget numbers.
The sad truth is that the best ideas are likely to provoke
conflict. Many good ideas already have. Rhode Island is not stuck in economic
neutral because of a dearth of ideas.
We are awash in good ideas, but people with power find many of
them too threatening to consider seriously. Good ideas are not only worth
fighting for, they usually require fighting for.
The title above is a bit of a joke; new ideas should always be
welcome. We learn and improve our world by seriously considering them. But
though it’s important to foster a climate where good new ideas are developed
and can get a hearing, they are absolutely not the way
forward for our economy.
What is? The first step to overcome our economic malaise
is not to come up with new ideas, but to insist that the old ones be evaluated
honestly.
Did tax cuts actually create new jobs?
Did developing all our open space make us more prosperous?
Did cutting education really help our economy?
Did ending welfare relieve pressures on the state budget?
Did cutting state aid to cities and towns actually cut overall taxes?
Straight and honest answers to these policy questions will be
worth a million new ideas.
Unfortunately for all of us, House leaders seem to be committed
to never considering the merits of their tax policies, and Senate leaders seem
committed to never considering the merits of their policies about local funding
and property taxes.
Few suburban town councils in the state seem willing to push
back against developers seeking to build on whatever open space is left. Fear
of admitting error drives our leaders harder than intellectual honesty.
Until we have leaders willing honestly to confront questions
raised by policy — especially policies they championed — and consider their
implications with an open mind, all the new ideas in the world won’t help us
one bit.
Tom Sgouros is
a freelance engineer, policy analyst, and writer. Reach him
atripr@whatcheer.net. Buy his book, "Ten Things You Don't Know About
Rhode Island" at whatcheer.net