The Strengthening America\u2019s Communities Initiative is a recent initiative from the federal executive branch to strengthen and consolidate the economic development efforts of the federal government. It places a central emphasis on increasing regional competitiveness through the cultivation of highly innovative business in a system of collaboration between various sectors and offices. It encourages accountability and performance based funding. It relies heavily on strategic planning and tax incentives to encourage this development. It is oriented towards targeting needy communities, using the advantages available to its members in order to achieve results and maintaining accountability to assure that funds are being used effectively. <\/p>\n
As presented the program has several strengths. It focuses heavily on developing human capital and building specialization, which are critical to improving the standard of living for communities. It targets the areas containing people with the greatest need, stepping away from trickledown approaches to economic development and focusing funds on targets that would most benefit from it. It preferentially cultivates local businesses rather than seeking outside industry to bring jobs to the area. It builds community by encouraging cooperation and coordination among local interest groups, helping to ensure continuity of community and avoiding any single interest dominating the activity for their interest. And finally, its regional focus allows it to consider functional economic units rather than political boundaries as the area to work on economic goals, thereby avoiding the potential for solutions that help part of a region on one side of a state bounday at the expense of the part in another state.<\/p>\n
Cultivating human capital plays a critical role in development efforts for poverty stricken populations. Low wage workers and the unemployed frequently lack marketable skills which would enable them to find well paying jobs. Efforts to create jobs with high rates of pay are likely to attract workers with better developed job skills. Conversely, jobs tailored to the skills which many low earners already have are unlikely to significantly improve their job market standing. Thus, it is important to prepare people to take on more productive roles in the economy.<\/p>\n
Focusing program efforts on areas that suffer economic distress uses money more efficiently. Some programs’ efforts are inappropriately skewed towards areas which have a healthy economy, or away from the most economically downtrodden areas. Guaranteeing that efforts and funding are directed to the places where they make the most difference is an important part of economic development work. Similarly, developers should consider the effects of picking target industries and businesses so as to enhance the performance of local firms and businesses who will recycle investments locally. In contrast, recruiting firms from other locations raises the possibility of importing competition, and benefiting firms headquartered far away. <\/p>\n
The interplay among constituents is another important element of a strong economic development plan. Cooperation among local interest groups increases the value that economic development efforts can bring to a community by increasing communication and reducing redundancy of efforts. Additionally, from a geographic perspective, a regional approach allows the inclusion of stakeholders from different geographic levels and different municipalities. Successful coordination improves the efficiency and effectiveness of economic development.<\/p>\n
Examining the proposed policy changes however leads me to question the true commitment to the principles laid out in the program overview. It reduces the available funding, and engages in an accountant’s sleight of hand to conceal much of it by converting the bulk of annual expenditures into tax breaks spread out over 10 years to be counted in the first year. The conditions for acceptance of an application pose another problem. While it is important for a community to be organized to make the best use of development interventions, in many cases the communities where it is most critical to intervene are not in an ideal state to assist. Making assistance dependent on an initial state which may be difficult or impossible for a community to obtain may be seen as a justification for delaying or altogether avoiding responding to a problem, particularly in the areas that need it most. This runs the risk of skipping over the very communities that need-based targeting efforts are meant to ensure receive support. Compliance with standardized testing performance and low criminal activity may be beyond the capacity of a collapsing community. And finally, regular, ongoing assessment of development projects is important to verifying their effectiveness and efficiency. However, it is important that useful and realistic measures be used. If rapid judgements are made on long term products, and used to deny future funding to a program, it may be that initial investments will not bear full fruit due to footloose investment.<\/p>\n
Funding for development efforts is important and must be handled carefully. Claiming to support entrepreneurial efforts is good, but if it is not backed up with substance, then it amounts to little more than political posturing. Entrepreneurs are likely to need direct financial support, such as subsidized loans, more than tax breaks. Attempting economic development on the cheap may thwart the fundamental goals of the enterprise. <\/p>\n
It is important to make sure that aid is provided in a way that responds appropriately to the circumstances a community is found in. Leaving a community to figure out on its own how to solve problems of criminal activity and school underperformance before providing assistance may be a formula for community neglect. Instead, embracing the flexibility of the program, and providing aid to build the stability and leadership capacity of the community if those necessary conditions are not available at the outset may be more effective than waiting for the community to develop them on its own. Tailoring the aid to the state of the community, rather than waiting for a community to obtain a desired state before providing aid would improve the value that the program could add.<\/p>\n
To improve this program it is essential to make sure that evaluations are channeled back into the program in a constructive manner. If a program has long term goals, it needs feedback over the long term. Rather than basing program continuation on short term feedback, using long term trends in performance measument to adjust the approach used in development enhances the flexibility and responsiveness of the program, rather than taking an all or nothing approach. <\/p>\n
In short, this program seems to have a well developed theoretical approach that appears to be poorly correlated with the few details provided about the program. It is particularly lacking in flexibility in dealing with communities that are already in difficult circumstances or communities that are failing to respond as desired. Enhancing the versatility of the program by helping communities organize themselves more effectively even in the absence of more remunerative aid would greatly enhance the value of the program to America’s most destitute communities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1509\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}