Center for Business and Economic Research - Ball State University


CBER Data Center
Projects and PublicationsEconomic IndicatorsWeekly CommentaryCommunity Asset InventoryManufacturing Scorecard

About

Commentaries are published weekly and distributed through the Indianapolis Business Journal and many other print and online publications. Disclaimer

RSS Feed

Disclaimer

The views expressed in these commentaries do not reflect those of Ball State University or the Center for Business and Economic Research.

Recent

It’s TDS to Suppose These Tariffs Are WorkingTrump has pushed the U.S. into an economic downturn that will be especially hurtful to Hoosiers.

Trump’s Tariff Recession Is HereMy new forecast, completed in late April, predicts a national recession began as early as March in reaction to Trump’s tarriffs.

Two Key Economic Lessons in One BillHoosiers face trade-offs and opportunity costs in the wake of SEA1.

Time to Fix Economic Development PolicyAllocating tax dollars to land development won’t cause economic growth.

View archives

Top Tags

jobs and employment 261
economics 202
state and local government 188
education 186
indiana 172
economic development 171
budget and spending 145
taxes 145
law and public policy 143
workforce and human capital 139
Browse all tags
Reporter / Admin Login

September 20, 2015

Regional Cities Initiative Already a Success

Over the past 50 years, only two Indiana counties have grown faster than the nation as a whole. The rest have been in relative or absolute population decline for a half century. Over that time, we have reformed and modified every tax, repaved and widened almost every road, reformed K-12 education and spent well over $50 billion in incentives, abatements and outright gifts to attract jobs to Indiana.

In some respects, things are clearly improving. We have a business climate ranked first in the nation and clear momentum on improving human capital. Still most places in Indiana are losing people at a rate that spells long-term fiscal and economic disaster. For several years economists and demographers have warned that Indiana needed stronger, more amenity-rich cities to thrive in the 21st century.

For more than two years, thoughtful state leaders have pushed the need for Indiana to focus attention on population growth. Indiana’s Regional Cities Initiative, one of the most creative and thoughtful public policies to come out of any state in a generation. The results have already been prodigious.

Last month, seven Indiana regions representing more than 4.6 million Hoosiers, a whopping 70 percent of our population, applied to participate in the first round of this initiative. The process required each region to submit outlines of what they will do over the next few years to attract people to their communities. The vast majority of these plans had to be private sector investment. The state money involved is small—just enough to get regions to work together. Judged on that metric alone, the program is already a colossal success.

Some have criticized this initiative, arguing that it encourages Indiana communities to compete, or that these dollars would be better spent on traditional economic development efforts. Those views are faulty. Many Indiana communities are competing in a race to the bottom, turning workers into commodities and desperately paying businesses to relocate to their regions. That hasn’t worked in Indiana or anywhere else for the last two generations. We have long needed a different and sustained approach to economic development.

The Regional Cities Initiative urges communities to be better places, competing against their former selves, not one another. Without another dollar of state investment this has been a great benefit to Indiana, forcing meaningful dialogue and creating new alliances bound by a grounded vision of a more prosperous region. Most telling perhaps is that the best plans are clearly from those regions that have already turned their attention to attracting talent.

Finally, it is important to talk about the courageous politics of this initiative. The Regional Cities Initiative is not in the national GOP playbook, which is too heavily dominated by tax cuts. Neither is this a Democratic program, since it relies so heavily on the private sector. The Regional Cities Initiative is simply the type of truly innovative, low-cost, high-yield public policy designed to make Indiana a better place to live, raise a family, make a life and grow old in.

Link to this commentary: https://commentaries.cberdata.org/804/regional-cities-initiative-already-a-success


About the Author

Michael Hicks cberdirector@bsu.edu

Michael J. Hicks, PhD, is the director of the Center for Business and Economic Research and the George and Frances Ball distinguished professor of economics in the Miller College of Business at Ball State University. Note: The views expressed here are solely those of the author, and do not represent those of funders, associations, any entity of Ball State University, or its governing body.

© Center for Business and Economic Research, Ball State University

About Ball State CBER Data Center

Ball State CBER Data Center is one-stop shop for economic data including demographics, education, health, and social capital. Our easy-to-use, visual web tools offer data collection and analysis for grant writers, economic developers, policy makers, and the general public.

Ball State CBER Data Center (cberdata.org) is a product of the Center for Business and Economic Research at Ball State University. CBER's mission is to conduct relevant and timely public policy research on a wide range of economic issues affecting the state and nation. Learn more.

Terms of Service

Center for Business and Economic Research

Ball State University • Whitinger Business Building, room 149
2000 W. University Ave.
Muncie, IN 47306-0360
Phone:
765-285-5926
Email:
cber@bsu.edu
Website:
www.bsu.edu/cber
Facebook:
www.facebook.com/BallStateCBER
Twitter:
www.twitter.com/BallStateCBER
Close