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Recovering from Issue 3
Friday, November 10, 2006 I first posted this comment on Brewed Fresh Daily. The tragedy of Issue 3 is this: We live in a state in which the three major business communities: Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati have a weak history of working together. (One business school dean with experience in the state told me a couple of weeks ago, "These people hate each other". That may be extreme, but you get the point.) Issue 3 further isolated Cleveland. Even within the 15 counties of the Fund for Our Economic Future, the issue failed 51% to 49%. It failed in Akron and Lorain, and barely passed in the Mahoning Valley. Issue 3 also barely passed in Hamilton County (Cincinnati) by less that 1%, even after the $100 million no-strings commitment to ship money from Northeast Ohio to Southwest Ohio. (Who was thinking? Shrewd politics, maybe. But really dumb economic development strategy.) And in Columbus, it failed overwhelmingly by over 25%: 37%-63%. Issue 3 was a debacle. It further divided the state's business community, and, most important, diverted Cleveland's leadership from the core issues of education and innovation that will drive our region forward. Now we have a new U.S. Senator from Lorain, a new governor form the Mahoning Valley, a new Lieutenant Governor from Cleveland. And no regional agenda. We have no set of priorities, no list of initiatives, no regional projects in which we need investment partners. The $3 million Voices and Choices effort (which started in planning about 3 years ago) has yet to produce anything meaningful, (beyond platitudes about being the largest civic engagement on the planet). The cost of the effort is exorbitant. Even with 20,000 participants, the cost ranges to $150 per participant. (By comparison, In Indiana we ran 10 regional forums in four months this spring with a budget of $60,000. We engaged about 2,000 people for a cost of $3 per participant. This was a little thin. I'd like to have had a budget of about $10 per participant.) The Voices and Choices preliminary report offers precious little guidance. Instead, it includes recommendations like "Improve workforce training programs and ensure they match the needs of both workers and employers." That's a bumper sticker, not a strategy. Let's look around to other agendas: NorTech's strategy document is more a general framework than a strategic action plan. There's no action plan, no metrics. no roadmap. Team NEO is busy reorganizing and refocusing, so there's not much there. After years of repositioning, MAGNET is just starting to find a new way. The jury is still out on that one. BioEnterprise has its act together, perhaps, but the overall impact of its work -- standing alone -- will be relatively small across the region. JumpStart is another bright light we have in the region. But there are real questions about the sustainability of this initiative. There are a lot of staff to run an organization of this type. The sorry state of regional collaboration in Northeast Ohio is not just my opinion. A year ago, the U.S. Department of Labor held an innovative competition. It asked each governor to submit three regional proposals to integrate workforce development and economic development. The prize: 13 winning regions would get $15 million to implement their strategy. Another 13 would get $100,000 planning grants to get in line for the next round. Of the 26 regions selected. Michigan got 3. Indiana got 2. Ohio got 0. In other words, Northeast Ohio (which submitted a proposal) did not even rank in the top 26 regions in the country. This is after all of the money that has been poured into regional collaboration. At the end of the day, with new political leadership in Columbus and Washington, we have a new regional opportunity, but no clear regional agenda. The reason Issue 3 was the only economic development option is because the Board of the GCP made it the only option. For the past year, they have spent time on precious little else. The GCP CEO spent his time trying to convince editorial boards in Lorain and Youngstown to vote for a thirty year old economic development strategy that does not work. And this is business leadership? Meanwhile in Indiana, we are launching a new science and math network to accelerate teaching of science and math in high schools. We have new initiatives to promote 21st century skills in high schools through major reforms. We have new university collaborations in innovation and entrepreneurship, and we are working on a new "compact" among local governments to accelerate entrepreneurship. We are working on a pilot program in advanced manufacturing with Purdue and NIST. We are extending rural broadband and accelerating rural entrepreneurship. In the Bluegrass region of Kentucky, I-Open is redesigning the regional chamber of commerce around new "open source" principles of economic development. The new mayor in Lexington has been deeply involved in these efforts, and we are presenting the new mayor with a strategic action plan by the end of November. The list goes on. You get the point. To say that Issue 3 is the only option for Northeast Ohio speaks volumes about the misguided leadership of the GCP and the ineffectiveness of Voices and Choices. Who is driving this bus? posted by Ed |
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