OXFORD — The greatest potential to bring new jobs to the communities where we live doesn’t rest with President Barack Obama or with Gov.-elect Phil Bryant. It doesn’t even rest with members of the Mississippi Legislature.
The greatest potential belongs to officials who drive pickups for the most part, who campaigned with newspaper ads, yard signs and door-to-door. The greatest potential belongs to county supervisors, mayors, members of city councils and, along with them, a cadre of unelected folks serving on booster boards of one sort or another.
Who says?
Experience says.
Watching TV and listening to those in high office certainly creates the impression that job creation is a top-down phenomenon. It’s not.
Waiting for Washington to reduce your local jobless figures is like waiting for Washington to improve your local schools. There is a relationship, but it’s indirect. Communities in this state prove every day they can have good schools, even with limited resources. The losers sit back, complain and wait for somebody else to fix things.
Congress has the power to set policies and create regulations conducive to job creation, but setting the stage is up to locals. Community incentive is often followed by significant legislative and other state support — but the local attitudes are essential.
Take the Pontotoc-Union-Lee Alliance as an example. Gov. Haley Barbour earned applause for the groundbreaking for the new Toyota plant. But the PUL Alliance recruited the company for its Blue Springs site near Tupelo. Barbour also earned the applause he received when the first Corolla rolled off the assembly line two weeks ago.
But it was everyday folk in the PUL Alliance who stuck their necks out year after year. Mississippi communities that adopt the PUL model of regional cooperation will have brighter futures even if Congress continues to preen, speechify and do nothing else.
Let’s talk sectors.
There are retail and service sectors — department stores, restaurants, tire shops and heating and cooling businesses.
The “big box” operators in the service sector make decisions on where to locate (and thus how many jobs will be created in a community) on existing commerce in a ZIP code.
That means Rolling Fork isn’t going to get a Macy’s and Macon isn’t going to get a Red Lobster. The supervisors, the mayor and the chamber of commerce people can court big chains — but they go where the data assures profitability.
There are also government, agricultural and timber sectors. They are what they are.
The two large sectors where locals can be in the driver’s seat are manufacturing and tourism. (And it should be noted that retail and service sectors grow in step with manufacturing and tourism.)
What PUL Alliance members discovered was that serious competitors for factories are prepared. Locals serious about increasing tourism get their ducks in a row, too. They don’t sit in an office, waiting for a phone to ring. Companies planning to expand and relocate companies want ready sites, access to river, rail or highway routes, utilities, zoning, clear titles and much more in place at the time of their first visit. Tour operators and travel writers want to know what you have, not what you plan to have. And in both instances, what people see and experience during an initial visit has to live up to the brochures.
Few counties and cities in Mississippi have the financial depth or expertise to prepare industrial sites. It’s daunting. Too, while there’s absolutely no guarantee of success, ample criticism is guaranteed if a prepared site remains empty year after year.
The PUL Alliance members — not a Harvard business grad among them — took those risks, hired the expertise they needed and worked with their neighbors instead of competing with them. Attitude got them where they needed to be when Toyota showed up, ready to be courted. The lesson in this cannot be overstated for other Mississippi communities.
If a town’s mayor or a county’s supervisors are always looking to Jackson or to Washington to add jobs to the local inventory, the town needs a new mayor and the county needs new supervisors.
It’s not that the roles of state officials and federal officials don’t matter. They do. The local component is indispensible, though.
Look at the communities doing well in this state. Look at those languishing. The most evident difference will be in local leadership.
• Charlie Mitchell is assistant dean at the University of Mississippi School of Journalism. Contact him at cmitchell43@yahoo.com.
