In the week that America expressed its disdain for Indiana’s spiteful political fanaticism, and its new “religious freedom” statute that would allow business owners to discriminate against gays and lesbians, comes a much more responsible story of what’s possible in public policy.
On April 1, Kentucky Democratic Governor Steve Beshear teamed up with Owensboro Republican Mayor Ron Payne to advance the economic and artistic interests of the mid-size Ohio River city. The two found a way to direct $5 million in public funds to complete the capital campaign and build the $15 million International Bluegrass Music Center.
It’s another of the astute steps Owensboro is taking to make the river city a showcase of public policy and economic innovation. I’ve followed the city’s development since 2011, when I wrote a new development strategy for Owensboro that included focusing on bluegrass music as a piece of the city’s 21st century economy. I’m also in a relationship with Gabrielle Gray, who as director of the International Bluegrass Music Museum in Owensboro led the work to promote bluegrass as a centerpiece of the city’s cultural and economic development.
Few small cities in the United States or globally are evolving with as much understanding of the new market conditions of this century. Even fewer are commanding the needed fiscal tools, or building the political alliances, with as much skill as Owensboro. The result is a city transformed.
Owensboro has the most inviting waterfront on the Ohio River now. For a few dollars increase in annual insurance tax premiums, premiums that rebuilt the core business district, nearly every homeowner within a two mile radius of the new construction is experiencing five to seven percent annual increases in the value of their residences. For a $190,000 home, that amounts to $9,000 a year or more.
It’s important to recall that Owensboro once approved $100 million in public tax benefits (worth $200 million in 2015 dollars) to attract a single manufacturer and 350 jobs. The roughly $8 million to $9 million in public investment for the Bluegrass Music Center could generate comparable numbers of jobs at much lower expense.
As a journalist deeply interested in public policy, it’s also vital to commend one more vital principle underlying all of what’s occurred in Owensboro — the idea that public investment for public purposes makes enduring sense. That’s how we built the country. That’s how Owensboro rebuilt itself.
It takes great leaders to break through the shackles of fiscal austerity, the dogma that government can’t perform well. Owensboro has a great leader in its capable mayor.
Bluegrass music has capable leaders in Gabrielle Gray and in Terry Woodward, an Owensboro business owner and bluegrass music lover who consistently added his voice, generous finances, and time to bluegrass and to the city for decades.
Having watched some of this take shape up close, and knowing how challenging it is to achieve goals of this magnitude in a frustrating, even depressing era of austerity and resistance, it needs only to be said that what has been achieved with the Bluegrass Music Center is a fine, fine accomplishment.
Congratulation to everyone involved. Plus one question — what’s next?
— Keith Schneider
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