NEW IDEAS NOW -DAYTON AND THE EDGE CITIES

(A Newsletter Discussing Suburban Sprawl, Downtown and City Abandonment)

CLICK HERE FOR RELEVANT LINKS

SEARCH BACK ISSUES or go to INDEX

To send e-mail:

ISSUE #54: SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 2000

As I said I would in Issue 53, it's now time for me to present what I have decided to focus on, for many years if necessary...

Attacking sprawl subsidies, in this region and statewide...

• Recent history: sprawl road-building in Ohio, and opposition to it...
  
  
  • The very first interstates built actually connected the towns, just like the two lane roads before them. Political pressure to attract the roads came from traditional cities, which didn't want to be passed by.
    Important issues included destruction of urban neighborhoods.
    I-75 is an example.
    
    
  • Then, an effort was made to avoid having the roads become local commuter/shopping roads. Thus, the newer interstates ran just between metro areas, with no effort to touch every town. (I-71 and I-70 are examples.) This was actually an improvement in terms of sprawl. We should have stopped there. But...
    
    
  • What began as a "project" became a self-perpetuating machine: the interstates as originally envisioned were all done, so "outerbelts" around the cities became the first "solutions seeking a problem" to keep the road-building industry perpetually busy.
    
    
  • As environmentally alert persons like me began to notice the that the outerbelts were worsening the problems they were promised to solve, we saw other new inventions become the rage as well: airport connector spurs, perpetual addition of lanes to the original interstates, upgrades of many non-freeways into "virtual interstates".
    
    
  • Even before the original interstates were done, it was becoming obvious that freeways were totally reorganizing land use. Instead of just linking existing population concentrations as originally planned, they acted like magnetic ribbons attracting development: As 12-by-24 billboards were superseded by 14-by-48s, companies competed for attention with all the signs by erecting "trophy" low-rise office or industrial buildings in an attemp to simultaneously advertise and do business. Ingenuity gave us long parallel access roads so drivers could get from exits back to these places. Next, major retail developers decided that all regional shopping centers must be close to freeways. As soon as stand-alone retailers saw where such new malls were going, they competed feverishly to cluster "big-box" mega-stores around them.
    
    
  • Now we're well into the nineties. The escalation of abandonment of existing areas becomes very noticeable to persons like me. Localness is now gone -Corporations no longer care if everything they build is oriented to freeways instead of to places where real people live. This is because most of what is now built is not built in the same town as the corporation building it. Speculative landholders and economic development departments of freeway-side small towns begin actually speaking of roads almost as government entitlements for their uses rather than as transportation. It is common to read business stories that speak glowingly of roads "opening up areas for development". This open arrogance corresponds with a new notice of what's happening by environmental groups, by inner suburbs as well as downtowns, and by historic preservation groups. Concerns about isolation, excessive driving, and time-waste due to our obsession with roads are even being voiced by sociologists now. By the late nineties, there are organizations around the country and websites declaring that the "road-development complex" has become a bigger monster than the "military-industrial complex" ever was.
    
    
  • Finally, the sudden craze for private new interchanges is the final straw for me and others activists here in Ohio. For over 35 years, we got along fine with the original interchanges between our declining cities. That has all changed. Almost overnight, just within 100 miles of Dayton, we now have several interchanges conceived by developers and created by ODOT explicitly to perpetuate sprawl. In Columbus, there are the Tuttle, Polaris, and Easton interchanges. Between Dayton and Cincinnati, there is Union Center Boulevard, the Hamilton Connector, and lots of talk about many other possible interchanges. The next one on the verge of being built is the Austin Road interchange just north of Springboro in far southern Montgomery County.
    
    
  • This brings us to the immediate present: As you will learn later, I may be on the verge of organizing opposition to the Austin Road interchange. Meanwhile, until at least 2002, there are meetings being held to discuss the future of I-75. I and others are arguing that ODOT must stop pandering to developers and "pro-growth" edge city towns, that this pandering is creating the gridlock that interstate truckers and their customers are demanding expensive solutions for. We are telling ODOT they must declare that the interstate's dominant pupose is transportation through our region by non-local trucks and travellers. If local sprawl is parasitically feeding off the interstate and interfering with that traffic, fix that, not the road. If the state doesn't work for better land-use controls along the corridor, I intend to organize opposition to any more widenings and all new interchanges along I-75 in southwest Ohio.
  
  
• Recent history: Enterprise zones in Ohio, and attempts to fix or phase them out...
  
  
  • I am doing ongoing research into the history of Ohio's enterprise zone program, so I do not yet know exactly how it started, and exactly what year. The first specific developments I know much about were the changes hammered out in 1993-94. Eventually, I will be an "expert" on more of the history before that. Before I discuss history further, let me describe what enterprise zones presently are, what they were invented for, and what they are being used for now. Then, I'll tell what happened in 1993-94, and who has been trying to fix or eliminate enterprise zones since then. My complaints about the present enterprise zone program, which echo those of others, will be listed later here under another heading.
    
    
  • Enterprise zones in Ohio are clearly delineated geographic areas where state and local tax breaks can be given to companies building, expanding, or relocating to within them. There are detailed criteria for locating the zones, and for approving tax breaks within them. The state Department of Development has a website dedicated to Ohio enterprise zones, and almost all sections of state law that apply to them are in one section of the Ohio Revised Code accessible on the web. There have been complaints that schools can be effected in big ways by enterprise zones. Therefore, there are now detailed provisions in the law giving the effected school district a say in the approval of tax breaks within a zone. Sections of the law sanctioning zones in edge city locations, and to "waivers" for businesses intending to go from an inner city to such a suburban or rural zone are problematic for me and others with concerns similar to mine.
    
    
  • Enterprise zones were clearly designed originally to encourage development in "underdog" locations -poor inner cities and high-unemployment Appalachian counties.
    
    
  • Some enterprise zones are serving this purpose in Ohio right now. However, many if not most are serving to do the opposite. They are attracting development away rather than to inner cities and Appalachia. A phenomenon that we critics call "the incentives war" is being used to try to rationalize this. This describes the new game that companies have become very skilled at playing, where states and towns are attracted into a bidding war to woo the company. If any strings are attached to tax breaks in Ohio, the companies just threaten to move to another state. Thus, we now have enterprise zones everywhere, in affluent as well as depressed areas, and all the other states do too. The only real winners are the companies, although sprawl-friendly towns erroneously think they are winnning too. The losers are individual taxpayers, who must make up for the abatements, and watch while companies fill up the affluent sprawl enterprise zones as the depressed-area ones actually lose companies. (If you can now get a tax break anywhere in the state, why would you choose to stay in an "underdog" area?)
    
    
  • In 1993-94, this situation was already obvious. The legislature began debates about how to restore the enterprise zone program to its original design as an urban and Appalachian redevelopment tool. Instead, greed and shortsightedness by most of the legislators led to the law actually being corrupted further.
    
    
  • By 1997, some state legislators and other officials in Ohio and elsewhere were discussing how the states might disarm from the incentives war by holding summits and creating a treaty. There was even a study begun in 1998 to prove that the war was definitely wasteful and harmful, but the researchers told us last year that it would take more money than allocated to do a thorough study. On this website, these discussions were mentioned frequently over the years. Ohio Senator Charles Horn of the Dayton area continues discussing the incentives war even now. I am on his e-mail net. However, he is pessimistic, and term limits are ending his time in the senate.
    
    
  • Now, in the year 2000, I have chosen to be a leader to keep the fight alive, and to win. Therefore, the rest of this history, yet to happen, will partially depend on whether I take on the whole incentives war, or instead try to just remove Ohio from it -by forcing elimination or repair of our enterprise zone laws. The reason I expect to win even though Charles Horn and others did not is this: I am going to publicize that our corrupt enterprise zone laws are a social justice and environmental issue, not merely a corporate welfare issue. I want my efforts to add to those of our state environmental groups, already attacking similar related problems such as the dereliction of duty by Ohio EPA, and the inept and dangerous Voluntary Action Plan law created to supposedly encourage brownfield redevelopment. Our environmental groups now have no choice but to stay involved with all of this anyway -Issue 1 just passed November 7th. We now must guard this like hawks. Otherwise, just like enterprise zones, greed will turn this plan from tree green to money green and it will be hijaaked by sprawl interests. Besides environmentalists, I also will initiate or support involvement by the Cleveland-area's First Suburbs Consortium, by historic preservation groups, and by civil rights groups.
    
    Some other details of my plans will be mentioned further below, the rest will be laid out as they are implemented in future issues of this online newsletter.
    
    My plans will succeed where Charles Horn and others failed because they tried to fix enterprise zones and the incentives war amicably from within government. It's now time for those in government to be pressed into action by me and others in the grassroots.

Dayton printer's plan to abandon city with help of sprawl tax break, and my response.

• Enterprise zones were invented to encourage "job creation" in our inner cities and Appalachian counties.
  
  
• Now, almost anywhere can be declared an enterprise zone where almost any company can get an abatement if they threaten to leave Ohio, or to not consider building in Ohio. Not surprisingly, companies are flocking to zones in affluent, semi-rural areas and shunning those in our downtowns and already-developed communities.
  
  
• Meanwhile, virtually every other state is also offering tax breaks to companies now. Therefore, we have an "incentives war" with states trying to outbid each other with giveaways. Thus, the cycle is now complete -the incentives war is a stalemate or a "zero sum game".
  
  
• Only two results have been achieved, both negative:
  
  
  • Sprawl.
    
    
  • The shift of tax burden from corporations to individuals.
  
  
• Fortunately, the political climate has changed. We now have a labor shortage, not a job shortage (except in Appalachia and our inner cities). Now, if states want to compete, they should be unilaterally disarming from the incentives war as fast as possible. The "incentives war" must give way to a "quality of life war".
  
  
• Therefore, grassroots pressure on our mostly-Republican state legislature and our Republican governor can now be successful. Republicans hate being labelled as sprawl and corporate welfare mongers. If they balk at restoring our enterprise zone laws back to their pro-environment, pro-people original mission, that's what we'll call them. We will argue that if Indiana or Texas or another state still want low-wage jobs they can't fill in the midst of their farmlands, then let the companies go there. In Ohio, we care more about our environment and our existing farms, towns and cities. That emphasis will make our state economy stronger in the long run, not weaker. Our slogan can be this:
  
  
  "Tax breaks for depressed areas only. -Keep Ohio
  
  jobs where they're needed and out of our farm fields!"

-Mike Monett