It's a different world in rural North Carolina

by Tim White, Editorial page editor, Fayetteville Observer, August 4, 2013.

It's easy to talk about economic development when you're standing in Raleigh or Charlotte.

What's not to love? Both cities are on dozens of best-places lists. Both are already a magnet for business and industry. Both have thriving cultural resources and academic institutions.

The knowledge-based businesses of the future are already there, beaming an attractive beacon to other companies like them. This year, that included the announcement that MetLife would shift 2,600 jobs from the Northeast and California to new offices in Charlotte and Cary. We can expect more to follow.

To a lesser but still significant extent, the same thing happens in the Triad, as the cities there make their way out of the recession.

In Fayetteville, we've got some roadblocks, most notably our crime problem and the federal budget disaster. But at least we know the solutions, chief among them knocking down our horrific crime rate so we can more easily attract businesses and industries that will better cushion our economy against messes like sequestration.

But what about rural North Carolina? What's going to kick-start bedraggled economies out in the countryside, where the mills are gone and Big Tobacco no longer drives a viable agrarian economy?

Unemployment rates in our rural counties are still sky-high, led by Scotland's 16 percent, the worst in the state. Bad enough to have Robeson's 13 percent, Bladen's 12.5 percent or even Cumberland and Harnett's 10.5 percent. All are well above the state average of 9.3 percent. By contrast, Wake County's rate is 7.4 percent, even with the national rate.

Sadly, the fastest-growing new crop in places like Robeson and Scotland is solar farms, the vast arrays of solar-energy collectors that feed electricity into the state's power grid. The solar farms provide pretty good jobs when they're being installed, but after that, routine maintenance doesn't write a lot of paychecks.

One reason for the lack of successful economic development efforts in rural counties is the failure of the North Carolina Rural Economic Development Center to get the job done. Recent revelations have shown that the agency was mired in politics and cronyism. An audit showed widespread mishandling of millions of state tax dollars. The center's leaders have resigned, and the state is redirecting its funding to new Commerce Department initiatives.

Commerce Secretary Sharon Decker was in Robeson County last week to talk about economic development there. She pointed to the announcement earlier this year that a sweet-potato fry manufacturer would build a new plant in Pembroke that will add about 150 jobs. Bringing back 21st century versions of agriculture and manufacturing, she said, is part of the answer.

But she also said rural communities need to focus on what she calls the five tenets of economic health: health; education; economic development; arts, tourism and culture; and quality of life.

Good idea, but in counties like Robeson, most of those tenets are dying for lack of support. There isn't enough money to maintain basic government functions, let along improve health and education. Deeply impoverished counties don't have two nickels to toss in an arts-tourism-culture hat when schools are marginal, health care is inadequate and quality of life for many residents stinks.

Secretary Decker and her economic developers in Raleigh need to consider the deep personal and municipal poverty in our rural counties as they rebuild the state's economic-development efforts. Robeson County and Wake or Mecklenburg have nothing in common. Nothing. It's a different world in rural North Carolina (which is most of the state, really). It needs a different effort if real economic development is going to happen.

And this time, we really need something that will work, lest we remain two states, two worlds, of have and have-not.