Federal panel examines economic tools

The U.S. Subcommittee on Federalism and the Census on March 21 held a special field hearing in Springfield City Council chambers to discuss federal, state and local economic development tools and how they’re being used in Midwestern cities. Rep. Michael Turner, R-Ohio, is the chairman of the subcommittee and facilitated the discussion.

It was the first time a federal field hearing has been held in Springfield.

The city was chosen due in large part to Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., who touted the success stories created with the help of federal dollars, particularly downtown.

“I don’t think there’s anywhere that’s bringing all of the assets of the community together better than Springfield to make the right kinds of things happen, to use the infrastructure that’s already there and not end up with a hollowed out center city,” Blunt said.

One aspect of redevelopment repeatedly brought up, both by Springfield Mayor Tom Carlson and by representatives from St. Joseph, St. Louis and Memphis, Tenn., was the importance of center city districts.

“Every time you build a new subdivision you have to replicate all that (infrastructure), which wouldn’t be bad if you were building it for the first time,” Blunt said. “But when you have to replicate that, and you’ve essentially abandoned things that the taxpayers have already provided, that can’t be the best solution. There ought to be a lot of options for where people can live, and center city should be one of those.”

CDBG success

Carlson had specific praise for the federal Community Development Block Grant program and expressed concern over recent federal suggestions that the program should be reduced or eliminated.

“If the CDBG program came with too many strings attached, we would constantly be trying to shoehorn the program into a need in the community, and that would hamper its effectiveness,” Carlson told the committee.

“We have a better definition of what can work and what is needed than people who are removed from it in Washington, D.C., so there needs to be a degree of flexibility.”

He also pointed out that the city’s CDBG fund, from which the city makes revolving loans for qualifying projects, has grown to more than $25 million. Projects using CDBG money are responsible for adding 375 jobs to the local economy.

Such funding also has helped Memphis, Tenn., officials revitalize its downtown, said Jeff Sanford, president of the Memphis Center City Commission, who testified at the hearing.

“Virtually, none of it would have happened without the financial assistance of local, state and federal programs,” Sanford told the committee. “Inner city development is costly, and time and again public incentives have spelled the difference between projects happening and not happening.”

One reason for the government’s hard look at CDBGs and the Brownfields program, which provides money to clean up contaminated sites for redevelopment, is the potential for misuse, a fear Carlson attempted to alleviate.

“We have been good stewards with the taxpayers’ dollars,” Carlson said. “Rather than trying to predict ahead of time what might not work, let people see if it’s working. There are certain benchmarks you could (set), outcomes you can look for. But when you restrict these programs so much, they lose their effectiveness.”

One new example of federal money being put to use locally: a Federal Aviation Administration grant approved by Springfield City Council March 20 for initial site work at the new terminal for Springfield-Branson National Airport. (For more information, see page 2.)

Work to be done

Diane May, executive director of the Southwest Missouri Council of Governments, also testified at the hearing. May, whose group covers Greene and nine contiguous counties, said her concern with government grant programs is the fact that they’re almost too complicated for smaller towns to understand.

“I couldn’t begin to tell you the myriad rules and requirements of the various programs, and in the smaller communities they don’t have a clue,” May said. “We need to make things more timely, more flexible and more easily understood.”

Rep. Blunt agreed.

“The chairman of the full committee, (Virginia Rep.) Tom Davis, said we have an analog government in a digital world,” he said. “The government is well behind the private sector, right down to how you fill out forms, and has been for some time now.”

After the field hearing, Carlson was confident that his testimony and that of fellow Midwest development leaders had made an impact on the subcommittee.

“Now they’ll go back to Congress, and Chairman Turner is going to be talking about Springfield, and you never know where that will manifest itself,” Carlson said. “He’s talking to people in the country who are looking for good towns to do business in, and I think that the fact we’ve done a good job with this money helps ensure that (the funds) will continue to be available.”