Day Two of the Governmental Research Association conference hosted by EducationNC and Mebane Rash is in the books. Last night the Civic Federation team and other GRA members heard from Western Carolina University Political Science and Public Affairs Professor Chris Cooper on the national electoral landscape, a talk set against the spectacular backdrop of the Governor’s Western Residence on Town Mountain outside of Asheville. (The Governor had other more important things to attend to.) Today it was on to Haywood Community College in Clyde, NC where we heard from local leaders (Shelley White, Stacy Buff, Margarita Ramirez, Kimberly M. Effler, IOM) on the role of community colleges in workforce and place-based economic development with a deeper dive on early child care challenges that raise the barriers to entry to education and employment opportunity. We also made a stop in Canton, NC to hear from Mayor Zeb Smathers who talked about the city's response to the sudden closing of the more-than-a-century-old Pactiv-Evergreen paper mill. Conversation took us to comparisons to the shutdown of major industries in the upper Midwest and Pennsylvania as well as strategies to drive a community to a rapid, sustainable economic and cultural reboot. Bringing the policy themes of Day One and Day Two together was a presentation and conversation with The Pew Charitable Trusts' Josh Goodman, a fiscal management and placed-based economic development policy expert who zeroed in on the failure of economic development funds to reach communities and the portions of communities in greatest need. The Chicago and Illinois distortion of the original purpose of Tax Increment Financing loomed uncomfortably but appropriately large in the diagnosis and recommendations for reform. Key takeaways from all of these discussions were the power of people and community in these North Carolina regions and the need to make objective economic distress criteria the driver of economic development funding decisions by state and local government.
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