Public officials in Northwest Indiana talk a lot about new directions and developments to enhance our future after the end of “King Steel.” Yet, over the last 20 years, nothing has worked and the future does not look any better. NWI’s problem is public officials lacking the leadership for creative ideas and vision.
NWI’s early solution was to place everyone on the public payroll. This was the East Chicago solution and the only one the city ever attempted.
It is still the city with the highest public employment ratio in the country. This is the simplistic and most unsupportable solution.
Then came the “gambling panacea” spearheaded by former mayors Thomas McDermott in Hammond and Thomas Barnes in Gary. This was the golden goose to be used by local officials for infrastructure and economic development.
Gambling in and of itself cannot be economic development; it is the tax that is extracted for the right of having a share of a limited license that is the economic development component. The local public leaders must creatively utilize that tax for it to have any economic development value.
The result from the gambling money over the last 10 years is marginal. To put things in perspective, NWI governments have received more than $1.5 billion in gambling tax revenues since it started. Besides some new wealthy individuals and new concrete and asphalt, there is nothing that is actually going to get NWI citizens into the 21st- century economy.
The sole exception is Hammond’s College Bound program.Its uniqueness in the desert that is NWI proves the point.
The next new savior was the Gary/Chicago International Airport, with its executive director, Paul Karas. He is being paid $150,000/year as a consultant — versus as an employee, like the rest of us, who are not allowed to deduct driving to and from work from our income taxes. This is a combination of Gary ego and individual greed.
Gary's ego is exemplified by former mayor Hatcher. People really believe that Gary has something that someone outside of Gary is really interested in. Individual greed is exemplified by the many public officials and their friends who continue to get wealth off the public dole. This has become a tradition in Gary without the consummate requirement of performance that the white leadership use to require when they stole the money.
The newly announced plan for the airport underscores the lack of understanding of economic development by our public officials. This plan is to attract Delta Airlines to the airport and have Delta fly passengers from Gary to Atlanta to connect to the rest of the world.
Am I the only one who has heard of taking Interstate 294 to Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, then connecting to the rest of the world?
The underlying assumption of public officials is that they can do this because they received $600,000 of public money to pretend they know what they are doing.
The latest manifestation of incompetent leadership is the Regional Development Authority. The number of incompetent officials involved in its inception is too numerous to mention.
Three things about the RDA: First, its major purpose is to permit NWI to spend its own money.
Second, in terms of economic development, it is focused on introducing NWI to 1950s technology: trains, roads and planes.
Finally, not a single person appointed to the RDA has the slightest knowledge about economic development, nor have they achieved anything in their careers that would indicate they can create a substantial ongoing enterprise. If none of these appointees knows about economic development in the positions for which they are being paid, what makes anyone think they can do any better in a job where they are not being paid?
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