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Bringing transparency to economic development

Writer's picture: Robb GreeneRobb Greene

This article originally ran in The Shelbyville News on January 24, 2024.


There is an assumption at the heart of economic development policy that views any form of growth as a net good. It’s rarely challenged. Those who do question this often-hidden assumption--that growth outweighs any and all costs--are invariably accused of NIMBYism, or Not In My Back Yard. It’s an intellectually lazy acronym designed to marginalize dissent, as if a fourth-generation Hoosier homesteader should have no interest in what happens on the other side of his fence row.

 

Here in Shelby County, two economic development projects have become political flashpoints in recent years. The first was a proposed 2,000-acre solar facility near Bengal. When announced, family farmer and now county councilor Kyle Barlow grew a handful of neighbors into an 1,100-member movement to stop a permanent crop rotation from soy to silicon.

 

The second is the ongoing industrial development around Pleasant View in the northwest corner of our county. A Five Below logistics facility and other warehousing have galvanized nearly 1,600 neighbors into the Northwest Shelby County Concerned Citizens Coalition. Those are just their numbers on Facebook. The true strength of both groups is surely underrepresented given Luddites like me who aren’t on social media.


When the opposition to planning decisions can be counted in the thousands, not dozens, perhaps there is something wrong with the process. As someone who represents the people affected by both projects, I believe it’s time to change how we approach economic development not only in Shelby County but Indiana as a whole.

 

In my first legislative session I filed a bill that would have banned elected officials, economic development entities, or any other publicly accountable bodies from entering into non-disclosure agreements with private corporations or their agents. Development types claim that NDAs are a necessary tool to protect proprietary information during the process of negotiating a deal. However, it would be more accurate to say that they serve as convenient gags on public debate, often preventing remonstrance until the bulldozers are already rolling.

 

The use of NDAs in public deals is disturbingly widespread. In 2021, the Fort Wayne City Council approved $16 million in tax breaks for a corporation then unknown not only to residents, but to two city councilors who voted in favor of the deal. By the way, that corporation was Amazon.

 

Speaking of the eCommerce leviathan, you may remember the 2017 HQ2 mania. Amazon, in what was perhaps the most well-coordinated catfish in the history of that term, saw 238 cities, states and provinces across North America thirstily hand terabytes of publicly owned data over to a private company in the hopes of landing the next Amazon corporate campus. You did not need an MBA from the University of Chicago to see how this would end. The chosen site had long been predetermined, so a city’s “bid” was essentially a voluntary data transfer to a private corporation with the absorptive capacity to immediately leverage that information to strengthen their market share. While the terms of most cities' respective proposals were eventually released, the details of Indianapolis’ bid still have not seen the light of day due, in part, to an NDA.

 

Currently, the LEAP Industrial and Innovation District in Boone County has become a hot-button issue not for its transformative potential, but for the way it came about. The project was shrouded in secrecy for months as 9,000 acres were rolled up through annexation and land purchases and earmarked for a project that was a complete black box to the public. Residents who sold land are said to have signed NDAs to bar them from talking about the specifics of their deal. It can be assumed that those involved in the deal as well as the third parties engaged by the Indiana Economic Development Corp. were also bound by similar NDAs. Perhaps more neighbors would have welcomed LEAP and the aforementioned projects into their communities, but we will never know as they were largely excluded from the dialogue.

 

A colleague who knew my feelings on this matter recently pushed back against my criticism saying, “LEAP is the Shohei Ohtani of projects. If you were trying to sign him, wouldn’t you keep it a secret?” To which I replied, “Every team in the league tried to sign him. What’s the secret?”

 

Therein lies the issue. Most major corporations, like the baseball star in my colleague’s metaphor, already know where they want, or more accurately, need to be. They merely leverage the fear of missing out by their soon-to-be new host to get the terms that they want. Letting the public in on the process is a necessary check on economic development agents whose only incentive is giving incentives.

 

Sadly, however, the relationship between economic development types and the public often resembles that between a guardian and their ward. It isn’t helpful that these bodies tend to view the people they ostensibly serve as obstinate peasantry, standing in the way of their enlightened deal-cutting. The hazards and messiness of public discourse is a feature, not a bug in our democracy, and those agents tasked with serving the economic needs of a community would do well to understand that.

 

This session, I have refiled my bill to ban NDAs as House Bill 1157 in order to ensure Hoosiers have a seat at the negotiating table. While the debate over land use, disuse or misuse will never find true consensus in any community, there can and should be consensus on the issue of transparency, and the public's right to have a voice in the process. So, the next time an economic development body encounters public resistance, the question they should ask is not why do citizens oppose growth, but rather, do people have a fundamental right to determine what their community looks like, even when an opportunity cost is involved. I believe they do and based on the grassroots movements we see in Shelby County and elsewhere, a lot of other people do, too.

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