With a start like this one I always have to remind myself
that the first few weeks of baseball season are always a bit ugly. The fans
look cold, the players are rusty and there’s a lot of “who’s that guy?” directed
at the newest players. By the end of the season, the kinks are gone, faces are
familiar and questions have changed. I remember Curt Schilling wearing a “Why
Not Us?” tee shirt in 2004 taunting the Bambino and his curse.
I had the same feeling of “Why Not Us” when I was making my
way home through the incredibly busy Atlanta airport late last week. I was in
Georgia for work and had attended a lunch with more than 100 small business
owners hosted by the Minority Business Roundtable. Georgia’s Governor Nathan
Deal was one of the featured speakers and is up for reelection this year. After
being absorbed in the Rhode Island governor’s race I was looking forward to
hearing someone I’ve never heard before make a pitch as to why he deserved
another term as his state’s chief executive officer.
I’m glad I was sitting down because as Governor Deal started
talking about what is going on in Georgia I might have fainted with envy.
Georgia was named the #1 state business climate by Site Selection magazine, their unemployment rate is 7% (which Deal
announced apologetically saying “we can do better”) and he noted that they are
doing everything they can to improve traffic, even getting rid of toll booths to ease congestion. Deal talked about
how Georgia has rolled out the welcome mat for the film industry noting that
small businesses are taking root around the endless number of films being shot
in Georgia (currently more than 40) and that by providing tax credits and working
collaboratively with the studios, the state is third — behind California and
New York — for number of films. Through the Hope Scholarship (which is funded entirely
through lottery revenues) Georgia will fully fund the training of anyone who
wants to go into a high-demand field including long-distance truck driving,
practical nursing, early childhood education, diesel mechanics, welding, health
technology and general information technology. Georgia is booming — and its
leaders are actively making good policy choices too.
While I was waiting for my flight home I looked up Rhode
Island in Site Selection magazine and
this was the headline that pops out of the magazine’s search engine as most
relevant: “Rhode Island Settles Land Spat, Clears Way for $100M Dow, Fidelity
Expansions.” I thought this a bit odd -- I didn’t remember there being an issue
or talk of these expansions. I looked a little deeper, saw a quote from
Governor Almond and realized that this article was old. Yes, the last “most
relevant” cite for Rhode Island in Site
Selection was three governors ago.
ACK.
Landing at sleepy T.F. Green (and to be fair, it was late) and
seeing the promotional posters and displays got me thinking about what Rhode
Island should be doing to be a little more like Georgia and a little less like
well, Rhode Island. It doesn’t take a genius to see that a state like Georgia
invests time and tax dollars in making itself more appealing. Our state tourism
budget — which supports our state’s biggest economic sector — is just $400,000
a year. Our Film and TV Office website looks like it was “most relevant” in the
Almond administration and features on its homepage a five year old economic
development study and “NEW Rules and Regulations.” There is exactly one photo
on the homepage and it’s of the State House. The message is clear: “welcome to
Rhode Island, we promise to wrap you in bureaucracy and red tape and make you
wish you never came here.”
I’m not the only one tooting this horn. CommerceRI and the
Greater Providence Chamber have put together a great website for selling Rhode
Island (www.GreaterRi.com), but with an absentee governor and the recent
scandal in the General Assembly, our business community is rowing a boat with
one oar. Any candidate for office must make economic growth a priority because
we cannot fund our social service network, our children’s education or preserve
our environment without a healthy economy. Instead of debating about an array
of social issues or whether calamari is the top app, we need to ask “Why Not
Us?” and then lay the groundwork to put Rhode Island on top.
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