Lucente’s EDA plan on target

By The News Virginian Staff

Published: July 29, 2008

The unfamiliar sound of harmony drifted from Waynesboro’s City Hall on Monday, when Vice Mayor Frank Lucente announced plans to push the Economic Development Authority from beneath the city umbrella into the bright light of independence and self-sufficiency. Lucente’s idea is for the authority to rely on its own money rather than the city’s, and for the agency to hire and supervise its own director sans city council meddling. To this, Councilwoman Nancy Dowdy, a frequent Lucente foil, says bravo, and we second her.
Lucente’s principal aim is fiscal, but it is also philosophical. The authority is scheduled to receive more than $1 million in city money this year. Lucente looks at the lingering economic clouds, considers his vows to hold the tax rate level (which propelled his overwhelming election victory in the spring) and recognizes the acute value of an extra $1 million in a budget of $39.4 million.
He also views government as poorly suited for the work of economic development. Government’s role, he asserts, is to provide essential services, such as public safety, and to maintain infrastructure along with law and order. Entrepreneurs and industry leaders, people whose eyes are accustomed to perusing bottom lines rather than government codes legal and bureaucratic, are best equipped to spur economic growth.
Dowdy is concerned about ensuring that ‘i’s are dotted and t’s crossed,’ as well she and the remainder of the council should be. Likely, she also favors the idea of the authority operating autonomously, particularly at a time when Lucente is a holder of majority power on the council.
Each of these views is correct.
Government, by its nature, is ill-equipped for the kind of swift action required to make development happen. City shelves are lined with economic studies in the pages of which ideas languish while bureaucrats contemplate municipal minutiae.
Moreover, there are certain hazards in mixing politics and economic development, chief among them not what happens but what does not. Rust Belt towns in the north are an example. Economic decline there was precipitated by industrial collapse, but in many communities it has been extended by political turf wars, with elected officials battling for control of development agencies and the ostensible power that accompanies them.
That’s precisely the scenario that entrepreneurs, investors and companies large and small want to avoid. Pittsburgh is a case in point. During the 1990s, when more than 200 economic development agencies blanketed the city’s metropolitan area, many of them controlled by local governments, the city achieved blacklist status from America’s largest corporate relocation firm principally because of fragmentation and government infighting.
Lucente’s plan would steer the city’s Economic Development Authority away from such hazards. It’s the right idea for Waynesboro. We echo Dowdy’s proviso that this initiative should be undertaken with care, but we urge the council to move forward with prudent haste.