Wednesday, October 21, 2009
BS Alert by Brett Narloch
Issue: Federalism
Kevin Bonham of the Grand Forks Herald reported that the Grand Forks County Commission declared Grand Forks County a federal recovery zone, which allows the county to accept more than $30 million in federal stimulus funds to promote job creation.
I’m not going to go down the road of whether the stimulus was a good or bad thing. It was bad. I’m not going to examine whether or not the federal government has the money to fund such silly projects. It doesn’t.
No, this BS Alert will focus on what Mr. Bonham left out of his article. How many of the Grand Forks Herald readers will now know that declaring Grand Forks County a federal recovery zone means that the Grand Forks County Commission believes that there exists significant poverty, unemployment, rate of home foreclosures, or general distress in the county? None. It was left out of the article.
In order to receive the funds, such a declaration had to have been issued. So there you have it… the Grand Forks County Commission believes that Grand Forks County is full of poor, unemployed, and distressed people.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, unemployment rates for the Grand Forks metro-area are at 5.0%, hardly high, and hardly cause for concern. According to 3-year estimates from the US Census Bureau between the years of 2005 and 2007, 8.3% of families in Grand Forks County were living in poverty, which is well below the national average of 9.8%.
Tom Dennis of the Grand Forks Herald recently interviewed Keith Reitmeier the area’s Job Service North Dakota director. On October 17th, when asked about unemployment in the area, he said that there are about 850 job openings.
This all isn’t to say that Grand Forks hasn’t been affected by the recession; rather, I wanted to point out that Grand Forks County is far from being “distressed”. Just look at recent headlines that appeared in the Grand Forks Herald: “Local Business: Bucking the Trend” and “Moody’s says recession has ended in Grand Forks”.
Of course, I think there was a different motive for accepting the funds. I doubt that any of those county commissioners would say that Grand Forks County is in terrible shape. No, this is all about money. I suspect that many government “leaders” would sell their souls to get Uncle Sam to pick up the tab on their pet projects.
In fact, that’s a perfect scenario for them, right? They can spend money from taxpayers in Arizona, Kentucky, or Vermont, with the appearance of it being “free”. There’s nothing wrong with free money! Actually, it’s money from China, Japan, and the printing press, but that doesn’t matter to a Grand Forks County Commissioner. Nope. They’ll do anything, even declare their citizens to be living in poverty, for the almighty dollar. This isn’t leadership… it’s BS.
PS – Burleigh County rejected the money, showing real leadership.
