Issue #2 - Economic Development
The commoditization of crisis has become Iowa’s chief economic development strategy. We build prisons. We build casinos. We lobby for taxpayer money to create social programs that fail to address the population intended to be served but we do enrich those employed in those industries thus creating an economy built around blight.
In the 1970s, a professor out of Northwestern published his study on how a poor neighborhood in Cook County supported multiple middle class and affluent neighborhoods in the surrounding communities. Current estimates document that we spend on average more than $80,000 per poor person in our society on services and programs created to serve them. In reality these programs serve more the people employed in them then the people the programs were intended to serve.
Recent examples highlight this. CIETC, a program designed to help people, like recent parolees, find jobs was a trough from which local corrupt officials slopped. Rock and Prevention, a youth drug prevention program saw one person take 39% of the program's budget for himself. This summer we read national reports about the Legal Services Corporation rejecting clients but spending money on $400 limousine rides and other outrageous luxuries. Finally Iowa has been ordered to reduce significantly the numbers of individuals in our state that are welfare dependent. If employment and opportunity aren’t the reasons for reducing these numbers over the next five years, governmental mandate and the elimination of benefits, with no back up plans, will be.
Regarding economic empowerment, my goal is to work to improve the wealth and success of the people of this district and to impact poverty, not just maintain it. To accomplish this, I will stress four main areas.
1. Promote Gainful Employment: Competent workers and available workers are the two major obstacles limiting business expansion and growth in this state. The level of blight and poverty in this district can be turned to opportunity because the land exists here to create new business and industry. If you go out to Urbandale or West Des Moines the land is being swallowed up. Our district, however, has the infrastructure and the capacity to absorb new and exciting opportunities. High levels of unemployment also means this district has a labor force that can be educated and trained to fulfill the labor needs of local businesses and industry. This is another reason we need effective and accountable job training programs instead of corrupt and exploitive programs like CIETC
2. Wealth Creation: Poverty maintenance is no longer good enough. Poor people in this district have supported entire neighborhoods in the Western suburbs of Polk County. An aggressive effort using programs like the Institute for Social and Economic Development must begin with the goals of creating wealth and opportunity. We must also collaborate with local churches and community groups like Citizens for Community Improvement that provide consumer education and classes on credit reparation. Residents of this community have the resources to invest whether that means in the market, a home or the ideas of their friends and families. If this were not the case rent-to-own centers, Prairie Meadows, the lottery, and local exploitation businesses like the payday loan stores and the title loan companies wouldn’t be flourishing. Instead, it is a top priority of mine to pull together collaborative efforts to help educate the residents of this district on how to create and sustain wealth despite the perception this district can’t do that.
3. Smart Spending/Smart Saving Efforts: Currently the residents of this district spend a dollar to purchase approximately 82 cents. This happens in three ways: We spend money to get money at places like the check cashing centers. We spend money to spend money because there are few amenities in this district like grocery stores and movie theaters. And we spend more money to spend money on things like higher insurance rates and rent-to-own products. Smart spending/smart saving efforts can literally result in tens of millions of dollars in resources redirected directly into the pockets and family budgets of the residents of this community. In fact, if we can get the residents of this community to spend a dollar for a dollar, it would result in the redirecting of more than $70 million into the pockets or budgets of the residents of this district.
4. Home Ownership: Home Ownership remains the American Dream. At the federal level this has been a priority but it has also been a priority of the Vilsack Administration through the Iowa Finance Authority. We must work with both governmental agencies, groups like CCI and financial institutions that have credit reparation and consumer education programs to prepare people for home ownership and then move them to home ownership in this district. Nothing will stabilize this district more than creating home owners, neighborhoods and communities with vested interests.
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