PROVIDENCE – Economic drivers and place-making tools are important to the state’s future prosperity, but, because of state budget deficits, certain programs have to be trimmed now and “resurrected” in a form that will work in years to come, Gov. Donald L. Carcieri told a crowd of Rhode Island’s business and community development leaders this morning.
The remarks were part of the opening address and panel response at The Power of Place Summit being held today by Grow Smart Rhode Island at the R.I. Convention Center.
In his keynote address, Bruce Katz, director of the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution, said the United States is in need of a more cohesive relationship between federal and state governments to efficiently fix a failing infrastructure and the disconnect between the nation’s 363 metropolitan areas, of which Providence is “one of the critical ones.”
“If metros are the engines of the national prosperity, then the national government needs to be in service of the metropolitan areas and their state partners in moving forward economically,” Katz said.
Much of the panel response – which also included Providence Mayor David N. Cicilline, New Economy Strategies CEO Richard Seline and Denise Barge, executive director of Minority Investment Development Corp. and the R.I. Coalition for Minority Investment, as well as Grow Smart Executive Director Scott Wolf – focused on programs needed to create what Carcieri called an “attractive” Providence metro area to draw businesses here.
“We have to do everything we can,” he said. “And we were blessed with forefathers who have made investments in this capital city and throughout our state that are worth preserving, worth renovating, and we have really been doing a good job moving that forward.”
But Wolf pointed out that the state has not been taking into account the full budgetary impact – on both revenue and expense sides – of the Historic Preservation Investment Tax Credit program.
“Those of us who really think this is a critical economic and neighborhood revitalization engine are fighting with one hand tied being our back, because we’re fighting against false presumptions” that the program doesn’t produce immediate returns, he said.
Carcieri said that it’s tough to pin down the actual returns to a program that the state has invested about $450 million.
“The management of the program, in terms of when we absorb the credits and the magnitude of what we’re absorbing, has became untenable in this tough year,” he said.
Following the hour-long panel discussion, the summit’s roughly 400 attendees broke up to attend a morning and afternoon schedule of two dozen workshops.
The Brookings Institution – founded in 1916, as the Institute for Government – is a nonprofit public policy organization whose accomplishments include helping shape the Marshall Plan after World War II. Today, the institute has more than 200 resident and nonresident fellows. Additional information, including the full “MetroNation” report, is available at www.brookings.edu.
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Grow Smart Rhode Island is a nonprofit alliance of leaders from the business, labor, academic, environmental, housing, development and other sectors that seeks to promote sustainable and prosperous growth and development. Additional information is available at www.GrowSmartRI.com.
