House New Economy Testimony Reiterates Importance of Communities

I had the opportunity to attend the House New Economy Committee Meeting for Andy today since he was attending a different committee meeting.  Rep. Ed Clemente (chair for the committee) asked a few economic developers in southeast Michigan (Ann Arbor Spark, Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce, Oakland County Planning and Economic Development Services, and Detroit Economic Growth Corporation) to explain what they feel is not working in this state when it comes to economic development. A couple of things that stood out to me:

1.    Over and over again, the need for communities with a good quality of place came up.  Without this, they said (and of course it's what we have been saying all along) it makes it increasingly more difficult for communities and economic development companies to attract and retain businesses.  Businesses do not want to locate in a location where there are burnt down buildings, pothole filled streets, unsafe neighborhoods.  They want to locate to a place that their potential employees deserve to live.  The health of communities shouldn’t be an afterthought.

2.    Along these lines, the competition for business is not between communities.  It is on a national and international level.  To this, there should be a state wide department that head hunts both nationally and internationally and provides local economic development agencies with leads or potential business prospects.

3.    Incentives are only as good as the problem they were created to fix.  In this new economy we find ourselves in, there are new problems that are coming up which means there needs to be incentives to address these issues. 

Rep. Clemente stated that in this transitional period we find ourselves in (new administration and new legislators by the end of the year), it is extremely important we start talking to candidates now to help them understand what exactly economic development is and what the issues our state is facing in terms of economic development are.  The ideas from the testimony today coupled with the testimony from other economic development organizations in past and future committee meetings will be compiled into a white paper.

Nikki Brown is the Capital Office Coordinator for the League.  She can be reached at nbrown@mml.org 517-908-0305.