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ITASCA PROJECT: A FIGHT AGAINST DISINVESTMENT
28 March 2004, Star-Tribune
Four years ago, at the turn of a new century, this page suggested that the Twin Cities was losing its competitive edge and faced a critical decision. Should it actively try to keep and seek talented workers and high-end jobs by enhancing the region's quality of life - better transportation and a more generative University of Minnesota, for example? Or should it relax and continue living off the vapors of past accomplishments? The question we posed was: Compete or retreat?
It's still an open question. Mark Yudof's effort as university president to muster an action plan fizzled in 2001. If anything, the region has slipped backward since then. Lethargy is no longer the enemy. In its place, a virulent strain of politics has emerged, one that celebrates retreat. The Taxpayers League has all but hijacked the ruling Republican Party, imposing what's best described as an ideology of disinvestment.
Its game, really, is to demand an ever-shrinking public sector and to shift the state's collective responsibilities onto local governments or individuals, especially those least able to pay. This is a disastrous formula for a state that needs to gear up for competition. It repudiates what led Minnesota to its once-lofty position among northern places. We are cold and remote. People won't come, stay and prosper without superior amenities, without a special bond that recognizes we're all in this together.
After a generation on the sidelines, the region's top corporate executives are rediscovering this truth. Forty or so of them have formed a new project called Itasca aimed squarely at sharpening the region's competitive edge by improving its quality of life. There's a sense of urgency and frustration in their voices. As Jim Campbell, the retired CEO of Wells Fargo Minnesota, recounts on Page AA9, theirs is not a business agenda but a wider civic agenda that vows to accomplish six things: a comprehensive transportation system; a University of Minnesota that generates more economic development for the region; better retention and expansion of large employers; better early childhood education; less economic disparity among races, and more success in nurturing small, creative businesses. This list deserves action.
CEOs are an impatient, decisive bunch. Campbell insists that business leaders would not have mounted Itasca without expecting results. Two of their front-burner issues, improving transportation and the university, will require the project to take gutsy stands in the messy political arena, to actually confront the powerful "do- nothing" wing of the Republican Party, to oppose its ideology of disinvestment.
Itasca must gird itself to declare unpopular facts: that the price of government has been falling steadily for 10 years and is lower now for Minnesota taxpayers than it was in 1991; that, even in the midst of a technological revolution, the share of Minnesota's investment in its major research university has been declining precipitously since 1978; that transportation investment has been so miserly that gridlock will hit metro freeways unless the state invests $15 billion extra on transportation over the next 20 years.
Continuing to starve and demonize government won't accomplish these tasks. These are not radical investments; competing states, Republican-led states, are making them. Top corporate executives understand that resources are finite, that spending can't solve every problem. But they also appreciate the necessity of long-term investment in a competitive marketplace.
Itasca tries to fill a void left by the waning influence of this region's great corporate families, people who insisted that the Twin Cities become an admired place for business, education, sports and culture. Retreating to the backyard patio, pretending that community assets aren't important are destructive responses that shortchange the region's children and Minnesota's economic future.
Itasca provides a welcome counterforce to this dangerous trend - not because its leaders have status, but because its agenda is smack
on target.
Copyright (c) 2004 Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved.
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