Last week, of the October 16th issue of the Register, I wrote
What happened? I had to put on reading glasses to make sure that I was looking at the Whitewater Register. The paper has two front page stories on significant fiscal or administrative matters in our school district, and a story on the upcoming Common Council meeting’s agenda.
Well, that’s suitably different – a Whitewater paper with even, straight-forward front page stories about Whitewater.
(See, Register Watch™ for the October 16th Issue.)
I’m not a wild-eyed optimist, and my reserve proves correct: Welcome to the October 23rd issue of the Register, much more typical.
There are two above-the-fold stories in the paper: (1) “WCEDA Unveils Its Countywide Economic Strategy,” and (2) “Out and About,” concerning a campaign visit from U.S. Representative Tammy Baldwin and Wisconsin Representative Kim Hixson.
First, the story on the Walworth County Economic Development Alliance’s countywide economic strategy. Early on, we learn that it’s been five-months’ time in the works, with Whitewater City Manager Kevin Brunner as WCEDA Vice President. (There is an Executive Vice President, too, in Fred Burkhardt.)
Predictably, the Web-averse Register offers no links for WCEDA, but there are online pages for WCEDA and WCEDA Whitewater.
The story continues inside, and lists how the WCEDA representatives tried “scrutinizing several targeted areas” including
The current county economic development process, and a recommended solution to enhance the process;
How to align workplace, workforce and workforce training to assure business that there will continue to be [a] skilled workforce;
How to maximize use of existing manufacturing facilities, improve productivity and build out present business and industrial parks;
and to develop a strategy in such a manner as data information and findings could be used in the economic element of the county’s Smart Growth initiative currently under way.The men named four driving issues in developing its strategy, including economic dynamism, workforce availability, revenue from taxable sales, as well as coordination and alignment of processes.
I’d say this was all just middlebrow gobbledygook, but that would be too generous. This group, even with the greatest regulatory authority (that no one would be so foolish as to confer) will not be able to engineer these results. Private concerns are best left to their own internal management of dynamism, workforce recruitment, and ‘processes,’ whatever they may be.
This is coordinating and managing nothing, but writing and pretending to do so. A career political appointee with no experience in private industry would only be wasting the time of knowledgeable executives, and compromising shareholder value.
The Register waits far too long to discuss the skepticism that met parts of the study.
Readers have to wait nine paragraphs, until inside the paper, to see that other WCEDA committee members were skeptical of the idea that, as the Register quotes Brunner more specifically, “it is astounding how much money is leaking from Whitewater.”
I should say so. The idea that there is a ‘natural’ or ‘proper’ level of sales, or taxable revenue for a county, is just nonsense. (The WCEDA study contends that sales are ‘leaking’ from Walworth County to other counties.) This is just ignorance posing as knowledge, and others on the committee are right to doubt the notion.
This is no natural level, just amount, or just price, in these matters. None. There is only the ebb and flow of exchange in the market, or by contrast regulation leading to stagnation. How much is supposed to be in one place or another is just guesswork in a fancy binder.
Later, we learn that the WCEDA Executive Vice President disputes that the “county is leaking” sales, but that the study provides a ” ‘shopping list’ of opportunities.” (Sales of 200 million, presumably.)
Please — this study provides a shopping list?
Later still, we learn that the WCEDA study offered a goal of “12,500 new living wage jobs [however they might define it] no later than Dec. 31, 2018” in a county, as Supervisor Bromley notes, that only has “about 2,000 unemployed residents.”
How should this story been headlined? How about, “Five-Month WCEDA Study Meets Skepticism,” the punchier “WCEDA Study’s Not So Studious,” or the ultra-punchy, “Duck! Another Wacky Study Comin’ At Ya.”
Note: As of this writing, the WCEDA’s Development Opportunities page is — ready? — Under Development.
First the webpage, then the county…
Second, the Register‘s other above-the-fold story offers “Out and About,” with photos of our Congressional and Wisconsin representatives. I’m not covering either race, and although I am favorably inclined to one of the two politicians, there’s not much ‘story’ here. Baldwin, Hixson, Towns, Ryan (from a different district) — it doesn’t matter to me — this is more ‘free publicity’ than ‘story.’
(Which one do I prefer, of these two Democrats, by the way? The high-quality one.)