Stop the Presses: If you're not part of the cover-up YOU are the problem
By Mike
Kroll
Monday
night's Galesburg city council meeting included an agenda item to terminate the
GREDA contract that brought supporters of that economic development group out
in force. They literally packed city council chambers. The city's agreement
with GREDA includes a 90-day opt out clause that can be exercised by either
party and Aldermen Wayne Allen and Ken Goad asked at the last meeting that this
issue be brought before the city council.
Mayor Gary
Smith sits on the GREDA executive board by twin virtue of his role as mayor
coupled with his leadership of NAEIR (a leading private supporter of GREDA). He
handled this issue somewhat atypically. Instead of seeking discussion from
among city council members first and then opening up to audience participation
Smith began with audience comment. All but one of the audience members who
asked to speak were affiliated with GREDA and a number offered impassioned
pleas on how misunderstood the group is and how hard they all work as
volunteers to serve this community.
GREDA chair
Bob Fulton started the evening off by pointing out that “GREDA's function is
not to promote jobs in Galesburg.” Instead GREDA “promotes leadership to
encourage economic development in the Galesburg area” and they are very busy
juggling some “25 or more domestic prospects right now!” The latter point was
in response to the very common public complaint that GREDA has devoted far too
much time and resources courting the Chinese to no apparent avail.
Fulton
quoted an observation from his boss that “Communities are either growing or
they are dying, there is no status quo. Economic development is at the heart of
a dynamic community.” Fulton and his colleagues essentially said that GREDA was
suffering unfairly from a bad public rap that was the result of unwarranted
media skepticism. He did acknowledge that part of the problem is the
organization's failure to communicate. Economic development is hard work that
demands a great deal of the volunteers' time and only very occasionally results
in success. GREDA has however had far more success than most of the general
public realize. If only the press would trumpet those successes.
The one
audience member who spoke critically of GREDA was neither well spoken nor,
apparently, capable of developing a compelling case against the effectiveness
of the group but in his own clumsy way he accurately reflected the palpable
disappointment and frustration that permeates this community with regard to
economic development. Citizens and taxpayers have grown extremely weary of not
only the broken record of big promises that never materialize but also the
total absence of accountability for the millions of dollars that has been spent
over the years in near total secrecy.
While the
people from GREDA admit to being poor communicators they also claim that the
essential secrecy of economic development precludes any meaningful
transparency. When everything is considered secret there is no accountability
for how time and resources are expended. If the Galesburg area economy were
booming and new businesses were setting up shop while existing businesses
expanded it seems likely that we would be more accepting of this secrecy but in
light of the actual Galesburg experience many of us have grown extremely
suspicious of GREDA and have run out of patience.
Let me tell
you what I believe.
Most of the
people involved in GREDA do mean well and a subset of them undoubtedly do spend
substantial amounts of time volunteering for the group. This is really no
different that people who run for elected office or sit on active boards or
city commissions or volunteer for their church or school. Lots of concerned
citizens volunteer their time to help the community, most in anonymous but nevertheless
important ways. But even most of the member and investors of GREDA are no
better informed than the general public.
Economic
development is indeed very hard and successes are few and far between. It is a
task that requires not only the time of volunteers but real resources and it is
likely that the Galesburg area has not been devoting sufficient resources to
the task. Often times the factors that determine success of failure are beyond
the control of a community or its economic development officials. Not
infrequently efforts and resources must be expended on long shots because, just
like the lottery, you have zero chance of winning if you don't play.
That said,
only a fool continues devoting all one's efforts into endeavors that have
failed to pay off in decades. Even the dumbest animal eventually learns to
cease activities that never succeed and tries differing techniques or tactics
searching for more effective behaviors. Psychologists call this process
learning and it has been documented in even the simplest animals; yet
apparently GREDA is the exception to this principal.
The city
began the era of public-private partnerships for economic development in
October 1978, thirty years ago. Back then the group was known as EDC but just
like today that first group was tied to the Chamber of Commerce and run like a
secret society. Back then Galesburg was still a bastion of low-skilled
manufacturing jobs plus instead of a prison there was a mental health center.
The EDC publicly claimed that it too focused its efforts on attracting new
medium to large manufacturing operations to Galesburg and over its lifetime
presided over the net loss of thousands of Galesburg area jobs.
Fast
forward to 2008 and GREDA. Galesburg has now lost OMC, the mental health
center, Maytag, Butler, Briggs and the mental health center along with numerous
smaller employers. Galesburg has not been alone. Communities all over this
nation have suffered a very similar flight of manufacturing jobs, particularly
here in the Midwest. In the process there have been many communities that
simply withered to a shadow of their former selves but there have also been
counter examples of communities that learned and adapted and show signs of
improved health.
The
Galesburg area has been in unremitting decline yet somehow has managed to limp
along rather than concede defeat, but time is running out. So far GREDA has
exhibited little evidence of learning as the group continues to focus on
attracting low-skilled manufacturing jobs that simply are not there to be
captured or seek to substitute smaller numbers of less attractive warehousing
jobs. The reason GREDA must be replaced is because they have steadfastly
refused to alter their tactics in the face of overwhelming evidence that those
tactics do not work.
GREDA has
been poor at communicating but that is just a symptom. When you almost never
have anything positive to report communicating clearly is not a pleasant
experience. For years GREDA and its predecessors have told us that good things
are coming but that confidentiality prevents them from elaborating or even
keeping score. At this point the Galesburg community has lost faith in GREDA
not only because they haven't produced results but more so because they were
never candid about either their lack of success or paucity of new ideas.
Now that
public criticism has reached a fever pitch GREDA and its supporters want to
blame the media (amazingly I wasn't singled out by name) for having the bad
manners and poor judgment to
report that the emperor wears no clothes. Alderwoman and mayoral candidate
Karen Lafferty goes one step further and chastises the media for reporting
honestly about the wider spectrum of the often sad circumstances in the
Galesburg community. The viewpoint seems to be: “join in the cover-up and there
is no problem, candidly report or discuss bad news and the messenger becomes
the problem.”
The
challenges facing Galesburg won't go away just because we stop talking or
writing about them and we certainly won't meaningfully address them from a position
of ignorance. The citizens, leaders and press of this community need to frankly
assess the strengths and weaknesses and begin addressing the latter as we
promote the former. The people who run GREDA have aptly demonstrated that they
are not about to change so we have little choice but to replace GREDA. If the
people who lead Galesburg can't face the challenges we face and and prefer to
be blissfully oblivious then they too must be replaced. It's just that simple.
11/6/08