ROANOKE TIMES 

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, April 26, 1993                   TAG: 9304260375
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

HOW BEST TO `GROW' THE VA. ECONOMY

YOUR APRIL 9 article ("Va. needs incentives, study says") on the Virginia Economic Summit reported the conclusions of a study by the National Association of State Development Agencies. The study was critical of Virginia's efforts to offer financial and other incentives to prospective new businesses. It suggested that "Virginia needs to reassess how it wants to be positioned for attracting new industry and for retaining the healthy and growing businesses in place."

I agree with the study's observation that Virginia needs a long-term and comprehensive economic-development policy. But I also wholeheartedly agree with the response by Virginia's secretary of economic development, Cathleen Magennis. She noted that we have to be careful not to offer open-ended incentives "with no firm idea of what it's going to cost . . . in the long run."

Magennis is also right when she identifies investment in infrastructure and education as the real keys to long-term economic-development success. Increasingly, we are moving away from reliance on manufacturing toward a service-based economy. It will take investment in roads, telecommunications, social services and education for our Virginia work force to be competitive and gain access to new, attractive jobs.

Certainly, appropriate and timely incentives are important: If a company is going to locate or relocate somewhere, then by all means we must be able and willing to make a sensible and appropriate offer. But sound development demands more than trying to outdo some other community to attract a business - especially because we, as a country, end up paying when one town, region or state wins only at the expense of another. The key to a long-run, strategic approach is investment in an area's resources: human, natural, capital and otherwise. To borrow President Clinton's phrase, we need to invest our money in ways that "grow our economy" and don't simply move around the pieces of the same pie. WAYNE D. PURCELL Coordinator, Rural Economic Analysis Program College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Virginia Tech BLACKSBURG 


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