From the Richmond Palladium-Item:
Richmond and Wayne County promised voters several years back that an Economic Development Income Tax would be used, as its name implies, to promote economic development, the kind that most of us imagine when we think of desperately needed jobs.
That the state has essentially deferred to local governments and, over time, imposed virtually no limits upon the definition of economic development cannot provide cover to local governments that would violate a promise, a public trust.
When Mayor Sally Hutton and Richmond Common Council Republicans came to verbal blows last summer over the mayor’s discretionary use of these funds, challenging her plans to use EDIT funds to rebuild a portion of South E Street, we suggested and then repeated just one month later that a working local definition of economic development was needed to avoid these kinds of unnecessary public skirmishes in the future.
“(A) bipartisan, agreeable local definition of economic development for purposes of spending future EDIT dollars,” we suggested here, “can guide us well for years to come. If road projects are part of that definition, so be it, but at least we have a shared understanding and agreement.”
Well, no such shared definition was reached and now, it appears, the mayor may unilaterally decide to divert EDIT funds in a manner that probably will not for long shore up city government’s overspending.
Hutton has advised county officials she intends to halve the city’s share of EDIT dollars that go for countywide economic development during the next couple years.
As the county’s largest government entity, that means the city receives the single-largest contribution of EDIT dollars, and now will be taking an added $345,500 annually from the Wayne County Economic Development Corporation.
In the process, her honor may unilaterally hobble economic development efforts, just when understandings were being reached and changes have been in the works that demonstrate a more responsive EDC to the city and county’s critical job needs.
This newspaper has been more critical than most of past EDC missteps and extravagances.
But that was then and this, as they say, is now, a time when this more responsive EDC has demonstrated it can close big deals and is closing in on some others that will help produce those jobs we need in addition to expanding the tax base.
It is vital at this critical time that, as a community, we be on the same page in economic development.
http://www.pal-item.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2013301100003
