Will there be "closed" signs leading into rural counties?

by Tom Campbell, Producer and Moderator of NC SPIN, November 22, 2018.

After more than a year dangling the carrot to Raleigh and other communities Amazon finally announced their choices for their HQ2 project. Once again Raleigh didn’t win the proposed 50,000 jobs and $5 billion investment. Curiously, we can’t find many really upset about it.

We’ve been in these beauty contests many times and haven’t even won “Miss Congeniality.” We’re told that Washington and New York, the joint winners, collectively offered somewhere between $2 and $4 billion in economic incentives. Unofficial buzz is that North Carolina offered better than $1 billion, Wake County almost $200 million, our community colleges threw in free job training and who knows what else was added. But using the $2 billion figure to win the reported 50,000 jobs we would have paid $40,000 per job, a pretty steep price; it would probably require 20 years before this investment paid off. And look at who is getting this largess. Jeff Bezos, majority owner of Amazon is worth an estimated $80 billion. It’s inherently wrong to subsidize the richest man in the world just so he and his company can get richer at the expense of the taxpayers. Factor in inevitable problems like greater highway congestion, higher housing prices, greater demands on public infrastructure (like schools, water and sewer systems, recreation and adjacent properties) and the resulting higher taxes and it’s no wonder folks aren’t upset.

Sure, it would be a boost to our morale, but we’ve said for more than a year the negatives outweigh the benefits with HQ2. Like the laments of the ancient Psalmists’ we cry “When, oh when, public officials, will you stop chasing big corporations and really address how to help our state, especially rural areas?”

Every day the problems grow. 33 of the 40 Tier 1 counties, the most economically distressed, lost population between 2010 and 2017. Supporting schools, health departments, water and sewer systems and public infrastructure becomes increasingly problematic, resulting in higher tax rates than paid in more prosperous counties. The lack of jobs forces many, especially young people, to leave to find work in more urban counties, leaving the populations of many rural counties older, less healthy, less wealthy and less educated.

Those left suffer from increased depression and disengagement. Leslie Boney, Director of the Institute for Emerging Issues recently cited the upheaval experienced in too many communities, especially the declines in civic engagement. In an interview with the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, Boney noted a 58 percent decline in people involved with civic clubs, a 43 percent decline in people talking to their neighbors and a huge decline in participation in government or organizations working to find solutions for problems. Instead, people retreat from front porches to their air conditioning and television. Churches are losing members and civic participation in voting is diminishing.

All the things that made our small towns welcoming to families and a kinder, more neighborly place to live have given way to increased family dysfunction, drug and alcohol abuse and depression.

We refuse to believe these are unsolvable problems, but ask will we continue our insufficient, ineffective efforts until somebody sticks a “closed” sign on roads leading into and out of these counties? If we’ve got $2 billion we’re willing to give Amazon we ought to be able to find the money.

But first we must stop chasing these big corporations. Remember: charity begins at home.