A newly released Brookings report spells good news for Boise and its suburbs. While cities in the west, and particularly the suburbs (meant here as cities in an MSA outside the primary city, e.g., Meridian, Eagle, Nampa) saw increasing poverty rates, from 2000-2008, Boise maintained a low poverty rate compared to the other largest metro areas in the country:
The issue of jail overcrowding in the Boise Valley has been in the news again. Canyon County voters have twice now told the law enforcement industry that they don’t want to pay for another jail. That has led to calls to create a new “regional” jail that we could all pay for. Dave Frazier loves this idea; I hate it. Ada County Sheriff Gary Raney also likes this idea since his jail will be full by 2014, he says.
BSU Criminal Justice Professor Mike Blankenship has written that sentencing reform is the way to go. BSU Criminal Justice Prof Bob Marsh is doing the consulting study for the law enforcement industry to determine the feasibility, etc. of the regional jail. We’ve got a regular ding-dong fight going here.
In my mind there’s one real issue - who we are locking up. The answer is damn near everyone. This is foolish. The government is responsible for protecting the safety of our person and our property. That is why we lock up murderers and thieves.
But the law enforcement industry is locking up everybody. In fact, only 12% of those housed in the Canyon County jail have committed either a property crime or a violent crime. The rest are dopers, drunks, and probation violators. The sad reason for this is that there simply isn’t anyone else for the law enforcement industry to lock up.
The fact is that property crimes and violent crimes have been falling for 20 years - and it has little to do with improved police activity. From the FBI’s website, I compiled the following charts to show that the wurl we live in is really quite a safe place, and that there is simply no reason to think that we need to spend MORE incarcerating misdemeanants. That is simply ridiculous. So here’s the crime picture in America:
Folks, we don’t need to spend more on jails. We need to spend less. Economics has long held that governments need to take into account the value of services that the public provides for themselves at their own expense. The number one reason for the decrease in property crimes is deadbolt technology, and the fact that people use them. There is also the “abundance” factor. Things like iPods, VCRs, TV’s, and digital cameras have no street value anymore because they are ubiquitous, and pawn shops don’t take stolen goods. We’ve spent 20 years “hardening the target” by adding security lighting, security systems, pit bulls, guns, and forming neighborhood watch committees. Thus, we need less police protection since we have taken security into our own hands.
If the demand for any other public good had dropped in the way that the demand for police protection had, that public good would be offered less. But for some reason people still believe that they are in mortal danger of being beaten and robbed, even though those fears are almost completely unfounded. Truth is violent crime is very, very rare.
I say NO to a regional jail, or any other new jail because the crime rate does not justify it. In fact - it’s just the opposite. Sentencing reform that would send dopers and drunks through treatment using dollars currently used for incarceration would empty the jails, and we’d be left with HUGE overcapacity. We don’t need another jail now or in 2014. It just makes no sense.
The Guv's tool for getting the financial sector to invest
So Mark Solon is pissed off at me because of things I said on Twitter in response to the Governor’s maddening finance summit held a couple days ago. Here’s the story.
The inimitable Norris Krueger live-tweeted the whole event, which was awesome. There came a point in the summit where the VC’s were summoned to the table. I imagine it was much like the previous Governor’s summit where the Governor and his bureaucrats sat on the dais high above the panel presenters, scowling down in barely concealed boredom. So Mark Solon took center stage.
A week or so ago, someone joked to me that Mark would get up there and say simply that, “there’s nothing for us to fund here.” I readily, yet sadly agreed that that would probably be the case. Imagine my *surprise* then when Norris tweeted that his #1 takeaway from Mark Solon was that “there was nothing for them to fund here.” I have several problems with that statement, none of which have anything to do with how and where Mark spends his investors’ money.
Mark may have elaborated; I don’t know. But the accurate statement would be, “there’s nothing to invest in here the way our fund is currently organized.” The distinction is important.
Highway 12 invests in early stage deals. They like to fund companies that have revenues, operating history, and a management team that is getting the job done. That’s what early stage VC’s do. In Idaho, granted, there are few of those deals around. And with the current fund, Solon and his partners probably don’t have any option but to do what they are doing: looking for deals out of state, so they can return a profit to their investors. But my issue with the simple statement “there’s nothing for us to invest in” troubles me because Mark has a ton of information about the system here in Idaho but in my years of experience as an observer and company founder who has been through this mill, it seems that the people that understand the weaknesses in the system aren’t willing to cast blame or enlighten the powers that be.
The Governor and his staff know boo about finance. They don’t even know what questions to ask. The helpful discussion in my mind is one where H12 elaborates to say:
There’s nothing for us to invest in here. Were we organized as a seed level fund, or a mezzanine fund, there would be. Idaho’s problem is getting the solopreneurs up and running so they can grow up and come to us.
But no one is going to point at the Boise Angel Fund, which wants to be a mini-VC, and say very simply “you guys aren’t getting it done.”
So in my mind, the only way that the phrase “there aint nothin’ for us to invest in” is helpful is if it is put into context, and then delivered with a remedy to the bureaucrats that don’t understand this stuff one bit.
Mark also pointed out to me that they just invested in a couple of pre-revenue companies to the tune of $200,000 and $400,000 or something very similar. That’s interesting because it represents a change in investment strategy for those guys. But it doesn’t get at the root of Idaho’s problem which is the complete unavailability of seed level funding of less than $100,000. That isn’t Mark’s problem, but I think it is his duty to tell the governor that where funding is concerned, that is Idaho’s problem.
As long as no one is going to point the finger at BAA/BAF, Idaho is not ever going to have a steady pipeline of gazelles for Solon to fund.
Final note: I like Mark Solon personally, and am glad for the work that H12 does for Idaho’s companies and in the community. I hope everyone understands that. But I also think it is important to speak truth to power. Maybe Mark did that, maybe he didn’t. But if Norris’ takeaway was simply that “there aren’t any early stage deals in Idaho” my fear is that the bureaucrats probably heard the same thing, but understood it less, and we have missed a great opportunity to tell the Governor what is wrong with funding in Idaho.
People who read this blog regularly know that I like to use Dave Frazier from the Guardian as a foil, and he’s an awfully good sport about it - and that’s just plain and simply because he’s a good dude.
Dave and I strongly disagree on the level of fiscal authority that should be accorded to Idaho’s municipalities. He likes the current set up where cities have to ask the state and the voters permission to do what is routine in the rest of the United States. I’d like to see cities in Idaho have broader authority. I think his arguments over the airport bond issues, and fire station financing were malarky (the Judges however agreed with him, not me). And, I think his no-growth vision for Boise and the Valley is wrong headed.
But I like Dave Frazier. He’s a nice guy. He’s a fun guy to have coffee with and can talk about a lot of subjects. If you spend any time at the Vista Moxie you know this. Dave is also a damn fine citizen. He cares about this place, devotes a lot of time to watchdogging local government, and has a hell of a following on his Guardian Blog, which I read regularly.
Dave sent me a note asking why I called him a “gadfly” in a previous post - he took it as an offense, and for that I apologize. But I meant it to mean a person who upsets the status quo by posing upsetting or novel questions. Dave is every bit of that. He’s a thorn in the side of city government, and that is ok. In fact it’s important. Boise would be a better place if we had a hundred more people that were engaged as Dave (I just hope they’d all agree with me, though!).
You keep being a gadfly, Frazier, and next time I see you coffee is on me.
Boise State has been a virtual ghost town since the students left. In fact, there isn’t a single source on campus from which to obtain food or drink, and there won’t be until January 4.
At the coffee shop in our modern new, Interactive Learning Center, I was able to grab a gas station style sandwich they had sourced from the cafeteria, which as noted is now closed.
I was intrigued, and encouraged by the label on my sandwich: “Fresh and Local.” Wow! That’s kinda cool! Someone around here is making sandwiches, shrink wrapping them, and selling them to Boise State. Great! If only it were true:
My “fresh” and “local” sandwich as it turns out was trucked in from Spokane, making it neither fresh nor local. This buying of the most basic of foods, the sandwich, from some unfamiliar soul in Spokane seems odd to me. Is there some reason our own culinary school can’t make a business opportunity out of this? Don’t we have a business school here that could help them with a business plan? What about Life’s Kitchen? Certainly they could use the money. But really - all you caterers and restaurants out there looking for business - you might pick up the phone and see if you can make an opportunity for yourself. I know I for one would much rather be eating fresh and local.
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.
Well, my first semester of Ph.D. school is done. Turned in the last bit of course work on December 8. Grades posted sometime over the last couple of days, and it turns out I am not a total idiot after all:
Yay me!
Now, time to celebrate with a beer. Feel free to do the same.
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: 12/15/09BOISE, 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?
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” levelThus 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.
Twice lately people have either asked me what the downtown circulator will do to relieve congestion on I-84 coming from Nampa, or say they don’t support the streetcar because it won’t relieve congestion on I-84 and that is what the TIGER grant ought to be used for. Proof:
My smart friend Claire has tweeted me multiple times about the streetcar. She seems to oppose it because it is a poor priority compared with the Valley’s desperate need to reduce congestion on I-84. I totally agree with that. Three things though: 1) I-84 is not the responsibility of the City of Boise. It is a federal/state maintained route under the auspices of ITD, and usually paid for already by federal highway funds; 2) TIGER grants are theoretically possible for highway funding, but hardly probable; 3) Improvements to I-84 between Nampa and Boise are probably not only beyond perceived cost caps on TIGER funds, there most likely aren’t any shovel ready projects on the books.
I don’t know what is on tap as far as future I-84 projects. I do know however that BSU and ULI hosted a conference on the subject of opening the rail line between the Depot and Nampa - which is probably the favored solution for reducing congestion on I-84 (except by Randall O’Toole and Dave Frazier) - and that Senator Mike Crapo has been working diligently on the issue.
So again - the people that should be working on I-84 ARE working on I-84. That isn’t the City of Boise’s issue.
As to this question that I got at Urban Lunch, all I can say is, “No, I can’t tell you how the circulator will bring people in from Nampa because it is a circulator. A downtown circulator. For downtown. Boise.”
Mega Frontier by Christopher S. Blanchard is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Header photo credits: Anjuli, ArielAmanda, ThunderHammer3000.
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