Time to create an edge, R.I.

We must accept that improving Rhode Island’s economy is never going to be easy. Our cost of government will always be higher because of our small footprint and trial-size population.

Unless oil in vast quantities is discovered in Chepachet, a vein of gold appears in Westerly or a plant needed to make a universal cancer cure is found that will grow only on Block Island, Rhode Island’s economic future is more or less going to be what you see today. As a result, we need an edge.

Now, sometimes edges are temporary. The Connecticut casino edge is a case in point. Maybe the income from gambling across the border is declining, but a lot of money was brought in for a time. Thus, edges can be beneficial even if temporary.

And keep this in mind: If a possible course of action has the potential for great economic return and your state won’t harness it, another state certainly will.

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Any edge that is the result of legislation is fleeting. What happens is that people look around to see what is working in other states and then enact the same legislation. A committee room I once worked in on Capitol Hill had a quote emblazoned on the wall: “Where there is no vision the people perish.”

We need the vision to find the advantage that cannot be easily copied and then run with it as fast as we can. And we have to do that over and over again like our forebears did. Rhode Island merchant vessels were once found on every sea that was conducive to the making of fortunes. When that edge was lost, Rhode Islanders turned to hydropower to run mills that fostered the growth of a large workforce. Later still that then-skilled workforce turned to manufacturing just about everything – large locomotives, Corliss steam engines that ushered in the age of electricity, tools of every description fashioned by Brown & Sharpe or Nicholson File, fine specialty items crafted at Gorham Silver, and still later jewelry made in every nook and cranny of Providence.

There is a lot of talk now about improving education and job training in this state. Of course we must do that. But an educated and well-trained population will not give us an edge.

A place to start our “Rhode to economic recovery” is exploiting Narragansett Bay to a much greater degree. We won’t have to fear competition from Oklahoma, Colorado, New Mexico or other land-locked states.

Narragansett Bay is our geographical edge. Interestingly, when Giovanni da Verrazzano made his pass of the East Coast of North America in 1524, he noted that what is now named New York and Narragansett Bay had the potential to become thriving ports. Today’s Newport was even referred to by him as “Refugio,” the refuge, a fact not lost on those Rhode Islanders later involved in shipping, and the U.S. Navy. It may even be time for our Washington representatives to start seriously lobbying to bring a greater physical naval presence to the bay.

Regarding Quonset Point, there are countries that do not have, but definitely yearn for and may even go to war to obtain, what already exists there: docking space with easy sea access, a 7,504-foot runway, and rail and highway connections, all within less than a half-mile of each other. That prized triumvirate of conditions is pretty rare.

If you have an economic edge and do not responsibly take advantage of it either because of a lack of vision or lack of will, then you deserve the economy that you get. That’s it in a nutshell, Rhode Island. •


Greg Coppa was an Albert Einstein Congressional Fellow and is a Fulbright Program alumnus. He has been writing for nearly four decades in local, regional and national publications.

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