I’m still plugging away on my “Economy 4.0” series. This edition, I tackle the topic of setting priorities for civic investment.
I start my column, “Tomahawk Chop,” with a brief discussion of the much-lamented decamping of the Richmond Braves to Gwinnett County, Ga. The Braves cited the inability of the Richmond region to settle upon a location and financing mechanism to build a new ballfield as the reason for their move. I make the case that the loss of the Braves is no big deal. Richmonders clearly didn’t want them to stay badly enough, or they would have gotten their act together. The fact is, Richmonders have lots of other places to spend their civic resources.
(Dave Anderson makes the case, which I share, in a Times-Dispatch op-ed today that Mayor L. Douglas Wilder deserves most of the blame for screwing up the Braves’ favored alternative of locating a ballfield in Shockoe Bottom. But that’s another story for another time.)
By “civic resources,” I mean three things (a) pork barrel projects made possible by our state and federal elected officials, (b) capital improvement projects funded by local government, and (c) philanthropic contributions from the citizenry. There is only so much pork that our legislators can bring home (thank goodness), only so much indebtedness local governments can take on for things like convention centers and baseball stadiums, and only so much money that can be milked from individual philanthropists and community fund-raising efforts.
Just as government should prioritize how it spends its money, so should communities set priorities about how they invest their civic resources. Currently, most regions approach civic improvements haphazardly. Many communities make laundry lists of projects they’d like to see funded, but very few have a strategic plan that articulates criteria for ranking projects, and then so ranking them.
I suggest that there are four broad strategic alternatives for investing community resources:
- Knowledge creation. Basically, we’re talking schools, colleges, universities and research institutes.
- Quality of life. For the most part, this category covers hospitals and health care, museums, the arts and the environment.
- Safety net. Lending a helping hand to the poor and afflicted.
- Social activism. Political agitation to bring about social and economic change by changing institutions rather than helping individuals directly.
By funding one type of project over another, we are making strategic choices. Most citizens would agree that the community should provide some support for United Way-type projects to help orphans, battered women, the homeless, substance abusers and the like.
Conversely, here in Virginia, there appears to be relatively little appetite for funding social activism. The prevailing ethic is that poor people should take responsibility for their own lives. Provide them a safety net if they fall, and give them the tools they need to succeed. Don’t waste time trying to change institutions. Other than the fact that I’d like to see an outpouring of community support for Bacon’s Rebellion — we’re all about fundamental change — I really don’t have a problem with this attitude.
Speaking for the Richmond region, however, I do spot a significant imbalance. We provide far more attention to quality-of-life issues than knowledge-creation issues. Richmonders under-fund knowledge creation, especially scientific knowledge creation. Outside of VCU, the Ethyl research center (petroleum additives) and Philip Morris’s new corporate research center (tobacco and cigarettes), very little R&D takes place here. And Richmond will never become a world-class center of knowledge creation because only a handful of people are thinking seriously about the issue, and our civic resources are monopolized by the demands of quality-of-life organizations.
Richmond has museums and performing arts groups out the wazoo. History is wonderful (I read historical tomes voraciously) and so are the arts. But does the region really need three major organizations — the Virginia Historical Society, the Valentine Museum and the Museum of the Confederacy, each competing for resources? Is that the statement we really want to make about ourselves: Our bodies may live in the 21st century but our hearts live in the 19th? If our strategic objective is to make Richmond attractive to the “creative class,” should we be investing so heavily in cultural institutions, as opposed to institutions of knowledge creation? Are we even investing in the right cultural institutions?
I fully expect that many people will disagree with my priorities. But I hope everyone would agree that regions should develop criteria by which to articulate their priorities so they don’t squander their finite civic resources on projects of trivial value.
