Do The Right Thing With Tobacco Funds
The Associated Press
Since 1999, Virginia has doled out $400 million in tobacco settlement funds with the ostensible purpose of rebuilding the economies of the Southwest and Southside regions.
The report card just arrived, and the marks are mediocre.
“Despite this spending, population in the region continues to decline, wage rates still lag behind the rest of the state, there is persistent high unemployment and poor educational attainment is still endemic,” a Blue Ribbon Review Panel report on the Virginia Tobacco Indemnification and Community Revitalization Commission states ominously.
The panel recommends a number of changes, many of them procedural. But its key recommendation is a whole-hearted shift in focus – to education rather than traditional economic development activities. We agree.
The region’s future depends on its ability to cultivate and retain an educated workforce. The region won’t be a major player in the information economy when just 17 percent of the workforce has a college degree or when dropout rates still loom around 1 in 4 in some counties.
The blue-ribbon panel completed its work in April. The panel’s findings leapt from obscurity to public attention with the publication of a Richmond Times-Dispatch news series this weekend, and they are now the talk of the Virginia political blogosphere.
At least one seasoned political commentator, Jim Bacon, a former editor of Virginia Business magazine, is ready to write off Southwest and Southside Virginia – in part because of this report.
“Even if the Commission followed the advice of its blue ribbon study group and invested more heavily in education, it wouldn’t make much difference,” Bacon opined in a column for his Webzine, “Bacon’s Rebellion. “Tragically, the vast majority of newly educated residents of Southside and Southwest simply would emigrate to metro regions where they could better utilize their skills and make more money.”
Obviously, we don’t share Bacon’s gloomy views of the region’s future – or lack thereof. The region faces enormous challenges, but opportunity for improvement still exists.
Importantly, the Tobacco Commission’s investment in broadband Internet throughout Southwest Virginia is beginning to pay off. The town of Lebanon has become a high-tech island of hope in the region – landing both the state’s backup data center and CGI-AMS, a software design firm. The challenge is to build on that success.
The blue-ribbon panel shares this glass-half-full perspective of Southwest Virginia’s future. The panel wants the Tobacco Commission to invest in education to a far greater extent – from preschool to college – and to target economic development funds to industrial prospects large enough to create ripples through the regional economy.
The Tobacco Commission can no longer afford to hand out money to small fish in the economic pond – like companies with a handful of employees. Similarly, the panel warns that spending on lawmakers’ pet projects, some of them related to tourism, isn’t likely to bring signficant return on investment.
The Tobacco Commission, which meets July 31 in Bristol, needs to seriously ponder the panel’s suggestions, then act on the best of them. It’s too early to throw in the towel on Southwest Virginia.
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Part 2
In an article entitled “Where Do All the Welfare Billions Go?” (Human Events, February 6, 1982) M. Stanton Evans points out:
One has to wonder how it is possible to spend these hundreds of billions to alleviate poverty and still have the same number of poor people that we had, say, in 1968…It prompts the more suspicious among us to ask: What happened to the money?...[A] tremendous chunk of these domestic outlays goes to pay the salaries of people who work for and with the federal government - including well-paid civil servants and an array of contractors and “consultants,“ many of whom have gotten rich from housing programs, “poverty” studies, energy research grants, and the like…
This is part of a discussion with a regional economic developer and I believe what is best for these Tobacco funds and he suggested just that. My goal is to not give people money or a welfare check. And another is to assure poverty doesn’t become an industry in itself.
1) Halt all government money going to EDAs, non-profits, etc. Keep funds out of local hands and keep it clear of local politics.
2) Setup a general education fund for the region’s residents. Pool all the funds going for tourism development, Tobacco grants, etc. into this. Use it as a conditional grants to send the region’s residents to school, redo high school, or community college. The focus must be general education, in particular high school math, science and English before any vocational classes or community college.
3) The student must be held accountable. It’s open to anyone in the general public regardless of income as long as the funds last and they are in the workforce or employable.
4) This is voluntary and pays only for books and tuition, no checks and depends on completing a class before they go to the next. They fail to perform they are out. Pay for it through a 2 year degree.
5) Use existing high schools, community colleges, perhaps empty shell buildings, etc. These must be public institutions, not private diploma mills. (This is not to become a business.) The classes need to be oriented towards jobs or can be used for a job. If a student wants an art class, they pay for it.
6) If a student has a job, they can come to improve their skills. This would be plus for an established business that needs a better high school graduate.
This system would weed out the lazy and useless unwilling to put forth an effort. This is a direct reward for those willing to strive for it. If an employer is willing to really commit to hiring people from college or vocational programs, I’d be willing to give them some sort of compensation or tax break. But that means if they actually hire them and pay at least $10 an hour to start and keep them for one year. (That excludes bringing in outside workers and also excludes use of temp agencies.) They get it at the end, not before.
I worked with one local business (they paid for it) to improve their workforce skills in basic electricity. It worked well. Beyond that, the taxpayer owes them nothing. They (resident and business) must stand on their own two feet. Get a job, starve, or relocate. End the corporate welfare and pork-barrel waste.
To quote, “Even if the Commission followed the advice of its blue ribbon study group and invested more heavily in education, it wouldn’t make much difference. Tragically, the vast majority of newly educated residents of Southside and Southwest simply would emigrate to metro regions where they could better utilize their skills and make more money.“
Letter to the editor:
Re: Do The Right Thing With Tobacco Funds. I’ve said both here and on my website for years just what this report has stated. It has proven me right about the fraud and waste surrounding the Tobacco grants.
With deep respect, the Herald Courier can’t seem to connect the dots. Remember the Measure of America on July 20th that ranked SW VA at 400 and E. TN at 421, the bottom 10% in the nation? Bacon’s Rebellion is correct in regards to more education.
We already have a vast education system in Tri-Cities with lots of college graduates, and they leave in droves for the exact reason he states. So why would doing something that lower-ranked ranked E. TN already does expect to change anything?
Please spare me the Lebanon hype and look at reality. Those are government contractor jobs and get tens of millions in corporate welfare, and aren’t paying anywhere near what we were told. In addition, there’s no public oversight.
Where’s the zillions of jobs Bristol was supposed to get from fiber optic that has cost BVU $60 million in debt plus an additional $10 million in Tobacco grants? Their failure is the inability to get the state to shift more taxpayer jobs out to Bristol. Everybody in SW VA can’t work for the government! It’s already 30% of the workforce in many areas as it is.
The changes they suggest still ignores the endemic political corruption and social apartheid that poisons this region. Will somebody explain how the Barter Theatre, tourism development, etc. qualify as anything less than pork-barrel waste? Look again to lower ranked E. TN with its poverty-wage tourism industry.
The report makes it clear that the $432 million has produced virtually nothing. I have some ideas, but I’m over my 300 word limit. We better deal with reality!
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