The risk of offering incentives to lure industry to communities and states is the zero-sum gain, the executive director of the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy cautions.
Consider the lessons of Cleveland, Ohio, Madeline JanisApa-ricio said.When the Rust Belt went belly up in the 1980s, the community set its sights on tourism and convention business as its economic salvation. To achieve that end, it offered incentives to attract development and jobs.
The unemployment rate decreased slightly, Janis-Aparicio said, but the poverty rate shot up to 42 percent. While people had jobs, they weren't earning a living wage, and few jobs offered benefits.
To compound the community's problems, the money used for incentives was property tax - which depleted school coffers.
"It was substantially a zero-sum gain for their sacrifice. When you give tax money to private companies, you'd better get something in return because you are indeed sacrificing something," Janis-Aparicio said in an interview Thursday.
Janis-Aparicio was in Salt Lake City as keynote speaker of Utah Issues' Poverty Issues 1999 Conference "Putting People First." The organization's 24th-annual conference was conducted at Central High School.
Janis-Aparicio helped organize and lead the the L.A. Living Wage Coalition, which was a driving force in the passage of a living wage ordinance by the Los Angeles City Council in 1997.
It requires city-paid contractors to pay workers a living wage and benefits.
"The excellent thing about this movement was, it was built outside of city hall," she said.
The grassroots effort has included churches, labor unions and advocacy organizations.
"They're basically taking ownership of policy making. They're forcing policy makers to be more accountable for how they're using our money."
Janis-Aparicio urged conferencegoers to be bold in demanding such accountability.
"We have to take the initiative (to ensure our economic well-being). We can't always be on the defensive," she said.
The annual Utah Issues conference is intended to give low- and middle-income Utahns the tools to help themselves.