Will Boise Lose Hawks Stadium?

There’s been a lot of hullabaloo surrounding Hawks stadium recently, mostly coming from Meridian. I have to hand it to Mayor DeWeerd and the Meridian Development Corporation: they have a vision, and a mission and they are going after it.

This morning the Boise Hawks unveiled a survey that showed a vast majority (75%+) of the 300 people surveyed, favored construction of a new multi-purpose sports facility somewhere in the Valley. It turns out that a plurality of people also identified MERIDIAN as the favored location for a new sports facility. I am guessing that this will have a few people at the City of Boise upset.

In January 2007, a design charrette for the 30th District Master Plan in Boise, revealed that the 200 people in attendance hoped that a new Hawks stadium would be built in downtown Boise. The photo below appears on page 185 of the 30th Street Master Plan, available on the City’s website.

Hawks Stadium envisioned as part of the 30th Street Neighborhood

So what say you, City of Boise officials? Are you working up a deal to make the stadium a centerpiece of a new 30th Street Neighborhood? The implementation plan for 30th Street says that within 1-3 years Boise City and CCDC will:

Identify where land assembly, land acquisition and/or development partnerships would help implement the development concept for each subdistrict. Initiate conversations with property owners to determine their level of interest in selling property, land assembly and/or development.

Where are we on this project? Granted the plan only went forward in June 2009, but with Meridian breathing down your necks, it might be time to kick this project into high gear - unless you really like the sound of “MERIDIAN HAWKS.”

Should Eagle and Garden City even be Cities?

This week the news broke that Mayor Phil Bandy of Eagle was resigning, apparently tired of “personal attacks” levied against him for his taking another job (though his Mayor duties are a full time position), and constant battling with City Councilman Al Shoushtarian. The Statesman has the full scoop.

The question in my mind, though, isn’t “who should be the next Mayor of Eagle” but should Eagle even continue existence as a city. Here’s the facts:

• It can’t afford its city hall space
• It has laid off 40% of its employees
• It has reduced its budget by a third
• City hall is closed on Friday’s because it cannot afford to stay open
• The City is borrowing money to stay afloat

This sounds like a city that needs to unincorporate, and get taken over by Meridian.

I say the same thing about Garden City. Ada Sheriff Gary Raney has said that he can provide law enforcement services to the municipality for less than what the Garden City police force currently costs. If I recall correctly too, GC has had problems in the past with making its contributions to Valley Regional Transit. The GC folks haven’t been able to get anything done with the fairgrounds either (though I am not sure there is any local government ready to tackle that problem).

So - Ada County has at least two cities on life support, and regional growth issues coming at us from all sides. That certainly isn’t aided by weak, fractured governments. These cities need to get it together, or give their marbles to someone else.

The Mega Project as Economic Development

Economic developers and especially politicians love big signature economic development projects because they provide readily recognizable symbols of their supposed effectiveness. But sometimes those projects go awry. Like Olympic Village in Vancouver. Vancouver lost it’s AAA credit rating when it had to bail out the failed hedge fund that financed the Olympic Village project. Word to local governments everywhere . . .

PDX: $613 Million for new Bike Lanes

Saw a story last week that said Portland just passed a $613 plan to improve bike infrastructure over the next 20 years. I know it’s apples and oranges, but $60 million for a streetcar downtown seems like a bargain by comparison. Full story in the Portland Business Journal.

The truth comes out: Harvard wrecked the economy

In my new favorite blog from Stanford Economist John B. Taylor we get a great dose of reality about the value of ideas. In a great blog post responding to the charge that Chicago School economists wrecked the economy, Professor Taylor shows graphically how that charge simply cannot be true. The graph below shows the number of University of Chicago, Harvard, and MIT economists on the President’s Council of Economic Advisers:

The only question I had after viewing the graph was, “well, yeah, but what about other policy makers?” He answers that too:

The data are robust when you look beyond the CEA to other top posts normally held by PhD economists. All assistant secretaries of Treasury for Economic Policy appointed during the Bush 43 and Obama Administrations had PhDs from Harvard. During the same period, all chief economists appointed to the IMF had PhDs from MIT, and, except for Don Kohn, who was promoted from within and Susan Bies who was appointed as a banker, all PhD economists appointed to the Federal Reserve Board were from Cambridge MA.

So the crash? Blame it on Harvard.

Veritas.

Building Idaho’s Human Capital

(H/T to Tim Merrick for sending me the data that I used in this post. You can read the whole publication of the Science and Engineering Indicators, published by the National Science Board, at the National Science Foundation’s website: http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind10/start.htm The data in this post comes from Chapter 8, the state indicators.)

This is a follow on to the previous post where I tried to illustrate the financial strength of Idaho’s universities relative to regional and national competitors. This was in direct response to the formation of the new lobbying group, the Idaho Technology Council. The Council and its supporters, as you recall, are huge proponents of increasing Idaho’s human capital, especially in relation to the development of Idaho’s technology-based economy. My next post will deal with the technology side of this discussion, today we’ll start with the higher ed component.

I hate always seeming like the bad guy here. I am not. I sincerely hope that the Technology Council is a success, and I would love to live to see the day that Boise State University, my alma mater, actually morphed into a “metropolitan research university of distinction.” However, I have consistently maintained that almost every premise from which we operate in this state, is false. We have lots of grand plans for spinning off university technology, and growing this booming tech sector, but folks, that just isn’t to be Idaho’s lot in life. This state simply cannot be competitive in those areas. It is time to rip out our pre-conceived notions by the roots, and get a new plan. Every economic development plan in this state needs to be scrapped and thought anew.

Mark Rivers has some good insights, here. SPORTS. We can do that. Recreational technology businesses and tourism. We can do that. We’re not doing them very well, but we could. But we cannot and should not expect our universities and state to do is become a sophisticated research hub that will one day cure cancer or even launch an important disruptive technology. Won’t happen. Here’s the evidence:

Academic R&D Output, United States, 2006

Academic Article Output in Science and Engineering, U.S., 2006

The research and development spending at Idaho’s universities is woefully inadequate - that is what the top graph shows. Idaho is at the bottom of the heap when it comes to basic R & D spending at the university level. The bottom graph shows the research output of science and engineering articles among the scientific community. Again, same story. There just isn’t any output here, folks, and there isn’t going to be, because Idaho and Idahoans are not going to make, in fact do not have the capacity to make, the necessary investment of billions of dollars into the state’s universities. Development of widely dispersed and marketable technologies will probably never happen here. Having a more educated local workforce can happen here; we can certainly graduate more bachelor’s degree holders that we currently do.

I would argue that Idaho’s economic development has become “path dependent.” The social and historic conventions established long ago, and chronic underinvestment in education and infrastructure (to name just a couple things) has placed us upon a path from which we cannot escape.

That isn’t to say that there aren’t pockets of hope, areas for growth and opportunity. As noted I think sports, sports marketing, professional services related to sports, etc., is a great place to start and to FOCUS. What will not work is a blanket strategy of “increasing human capital” and targeting the “information technology” sector. That is destined to fail. If the universities in this state are to be called upon to be a part of the economic engine here, they are going to need small, clearly defined, narrow targets that are directly applicable to very specific capacities in the private sector. “Nanotechnology” is not specific. “Green energy” is not specific. Those are HUGE fields dominated by the biggest players.

The longer we maintain the facade that we have at our fingertips all the tools we need to be the next SLC or the next Denver, the more economically and psychologically painful reality becomes. The sooner we replace grand visions, i.e., fantasies, with small victories, the better.

Infra what? Infrastructure.

Economic developers are really a hoot. They cook up all these complicated plans for tax cuts, hold “innovation summits,” create “enterprise zones” and all other manner of schemes to attract business to their city/state/region. But you know what business can’t live without? Power. Yeah, reliable power. As our good friends over at KBCI reported:

Squirrels take down 30 city blocks of power

By Alana Brophy

BOISE - A blackout in downtown Boise knocked out power for almost three hours Friday night.

The first power outage happened around 5 p.m., and then again just after midnight, Saturday morning.

The city went black from 4th to 24th, covering Main to State street cutting power to businesses and residents.

Power crews and firefighters say two squirrels shorted a power line which then caught fire.

The general manager of Mazzah Mediterranean Grill says this is the third time this has happened this year.

“That’s very ridiculous, if two squirrels can cause all this trouble they should find another way to deal with this problem,” said Sam Bataineh.

His employees ended up transporting food to different locations in their personal vehicles.

Natalie Rhodes, a manager at Mazzah’s says the outage cost them big bucks.

“It’s unfortunate that it happened on a Friday night, when it’s our busiest night,” Rhodes said. “But there’s really nothing you can do about squirrels.”

Numerous fender benders occurred at intersections as well. Initially 1900 Idaho Power customers lost service for nearly three hours. As of Friday night, 640 were still waiting on service.

Blackouts in the central business district are a bad thing. A very bad thing. If you are in economic development hear these words I say: Infrastructure. Human capital. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. That’s really all there is to developing an economy. Instead, look for some new wildlife management policy to keep those rascally squirrels away from downtown.

Time to get real about education in Idaho

If there is one precept in social science that can be taken as absolute gospel, it is this: your income potential is largely dependent upon your level of education. That is, more education leads to higher income potential. So a couple of trends that I see happening around the intermountain west cause me some concern. Let’s start with the work world.

In case you did not know it, the largest private employer in the State of Idaho is Wal Mart.

In case you are skimming this post, let me type that again: the largest private employer in the state of Idaho is Wal Mart.

Micron was formerly the top private employer in the state, but no more. Those jobs are now in China where they make stuff that they sell at Wal Mart. But I digress.

So as we have lost high-wage jobs in the private sector, we’ve also frankly just sat idle on education. And, no, not everyone has. In fact, the news today if you dig deep enough was actually quite revealing. Late today, this story hit the wire:

Faculty at ID universities decry policy changes
The Associated Press
Published: 12/15/09

BOISE, Idaho — Faculty representatives at Idaho’s public universities say proposed changes to state Board of Education policies would give presidents of the institutions broad power to make salary cuts during tough times.

Faculty say the revisions would allow university presidents to make permanent salary reductions - regardless of contracts with tenured and non-tenured professors and some staff members.

The proposed revisions, faculty say, would also allow the university presidents facing financial challenges to temporarily reduce wages through furloughs.

Board officials say the revisions aim to give presidents at the University of Idaho, Idaho State University, Boise State University and Lewis-Clark State College more authority and flexibility to make budget cuts amid state shortfalls.

Everyone is in crisis, though, so these budget cuts have to happen, right. Wrong.

If you read the Brookings Report that came out this week, which everyone has by now, you’ll note that the economic recovery (just as I said) is uneven all across the United States. And now, thanks to Brookings and its new Mountain West initiative, we can see exactly how Boise compares to its neighbors in the region. But the important part of the Brookings report for me was noting who wrote it. As it turns out, the Director of this new Brookings initiative is none other than Dr. Robert Lang, one of the nation’s most respected urbanists, and now a new faculty member at University Nevada Las Vegas.

This point is important: as Idaho looks to find ways to pay faculty less, UNLV is luring rock star faculty. Last year they hired noted historian Greg Hise away from USC. Faculty like that don’t come cheap - these guys make real money. And UNLV isn’t the only regional competitor to Boise State that has been hiring rock stars. Last year the University of Utah hired noted urban planning professor Chris Nelson, one of Lang’s colleagues at Virginia Tech.

Idaho is fast becoming a backwater. Our universities are not competitive, our people work at Wal Mart. Dear Legislature, are you listening?

2,100 Idaho Jobs Created or Saved from Stimulus? Impossible.

The following is an e-mail I sent to Idaho Statesman reporter Bill Roberts regarding his article in the Sunday paper on page A1. The article states that the $246 million that Idaho has received in federal stimulus money has created or saved 2,100 jobs. Here’s my retort, after doing the math:

Bill:

Interesting article you have on A1 of the Sunday paper. Something isn’t adding up, however. In September I sent the attached file over to Kevin Richert to review. In it, it shows that according to the records of the federal government, as of July 2009, Idaho had received $235 million in stimulus money for transportation projects. If you scroll to the last column of the file, you’ll see that only $671,000 has made it to payroll. That’s not a lot of money.

The figure you show in the paper says Idaho has received $246 million, and that economists estimate 2,100 jobs were created or saved by that infusion. That can’t be possible. Again, in the attached file, the feds are claiming that only 136 jobs have been created by the $235 million. There is just simply no possible way the $11 million dollars difference between our figures created 2,000 jobs. And I think the feds are over estimating that 136 unless they are annualizing those, which they must be.

If only $671,000 has made it to payroll so far, that doesn’t support that many jobs. The ARRA was passed in February 2009. Let’s assume then that at most this file shows the payroll generated by a full quarter - that is probably grossly overstating reality. But rolling with that assumption the findings are not so good.

Payroll of $671,000 per quarter for one year would support these various scenarios:

178 minimum wage ($7.25) jobs.
or
150 “living wage” ($8.63) jobs
or
130 jobs that could support a family of four at poverty level
or
45 jobs that could support a family of four at the “living wage” level

Thus it seems that the case you outline in the paper is probably grossly overstated. For certain there is no theoretical way (i.e., no mathematical way possible) that the money has created/saved 2,100 jobs.

The report I used was from data reported through July. The latest figures reported by the feds run through October 31, 2009. More money is finally hitting payroll - a total of $4.5 million has now made it to people’s pockets (remember though we got over $230 million). Assuming that $4.5 million is about 6 months of wages and the total wages paid out over the course of a year will be twice that - $9 million - here’s what we’re looking at for job creation/saving:

597 jobs at minimum wage
501 jobs at living wage
440 jobs supporting a family of four at poverty level
149 jobs supporting a family of four at living wage level

So we are still nowhere near the 2,100 jobs claimed. You can do the math yourself with the living wage calculator and the feds’ stimulus accountability reports. As poor a job as Idaho is doing spending the stimulus money, at least we didn’t get a nasty letter from the feds like Utah did. Finally, something we’re doing better than Utah.

Police Department Revenue Source: Stealing from Poor People

Taking property from poor people without due process of law in order to enrich local police departments. Seems like the sort of thing Barack Obama might have fought to change in his days as a community organizer.

One of the most astute observers of global criminal justice policy, Radley Balko, writes that above missive in a recent blog post on his popular Agitator blog. As it turns out, indeed, the Obama administration supported via friend of the court briefs, the State of Illinois’ seizure of assets from 6 people NOT charged with any crime.

Soon, the U.S. Supreme Court will review the Alvarez v. Smith case in which, as noted, six persons had their property seized - and were never charged with a crime. The facts of the case, as Radley Balko points out, are this:

The six petitioners in Alvarez each had property seized by police who suspected the property had been involved in a drug crime. Three had their cars seized, three had cash taken. None of the six were served with a warrant, none of the six were charged with the crime. All perfectly legal, at least until now.

Under DAFPA (Illinois’ Drug Asset Forfeiture Procedure Act), incredibly, the government can delay for up to 187 days before an aggrieved property owner can get even a preliminary hearing on warrantless seizures of less than $20,000. The three car owners, for example, had to go without their cars for more than a year.

As shocking as that sounds, President Obama’s Justice Department sided with the State of Illinois in the initial court battle. The more conservative U.S. Supreme Court may not feel the same way.

So what are the police departments doing with the assets seized from people who have committed no crime? Selling them, of course, and sticking the proceeds in their budget coffers. In Roseville, Michigan over 4% of the police department budget comes from selling looted assets. In Romulus, Michigan it’s over 11%!

File this under, if you aint angry, you aint paying attention.