Name: Scott Wolfe
Position: Executive Director, Grow Smart Rhode Island. Started in the position on March 15, 1999
Backround: Executive director of the ’98 Project, a coalition of labor unions and other progressive groups in Washington, D.C., working to promote progressive alternatives to the Gingrich agenda in Congress, four years; consultant to the Democratic Governors’ Association; managed a U.S. Senate campaign in Washington State in 1994; from 1991 to 1994 was Gov. Bruce Sundlun’s director of Housing, Energy and Intergovernmental Relations; also ran for Congress in the first district in Rhode Island in 1988 and 1990.
Education: A.B., Brown University, 1975.
Age: 46
Residence: Providence
Family: Married, no children
PBN: What brought you back to Rhode Island?
Wolf: Really two things brought me back to Rhode Island. While I was in Washington my wife was still working here, and I’d commute weekends, so it was much better for us if I returned here full-time. Another very important thing is this job and the opportunity to have a major positive impact on Rhode Island’s future, particularly its growth patterns and ability to grow economically without destroying our soul, which is the basic objective of Grow Smart Rhode Island. To promote economic growth that retain Rhode Island’s special places and treasurers and still tap more of our economic potential and figure out the most economically efficient, socially equitable, environmentally responsible way to grow economically.
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Who is Grow Smart? Who meaning what parties make up Grow Smart?
We’re a broad coalition of the business community, leaders of our colleges and universities, environmental community, historic preservation community, urban revitalization, some reputation from the religious community. A number of folks with a real concern about promoting smarter growth and more long range planning of our future.
If you look at the make-up of the board of Grow Smart, what segment has greatest dominance?
The single, biggest segment, not necessarily a majority, but certainly a plurality is the business community. I think that gives Grow Smart Rhode Island an opportunity for impact that may be greater than Smart Growth coalitions in other states, where there isn’t as much business community involvement. I think the main reason there is as much business involvement here as we have is because of the leadership, commitment and energy of Jim Dodge, who is the chairman of the board of Grow Smart Rhode Island and who really assembled this board. Working with some people from grass roots organizations, he developed this whole concept, and raised the money and put this whole organization together.
How long has Grow Smart been around in Rhode Island?
As a formal, incorporated entity only for about a year. As an informal, loose coalition for about two years.
Is Grow Smart mostly a lobby group?
Actually we’re primarily – we’re certainly interested in and are starting to get involved in lobbying and issue advocacy. But we’re also very involved in policy research and educating the public and policy makers about some of the growth issues in the state and some of those potential solutions to those issue. So, it’s public education, research, issue advocacy.
Similar in mission to RIPEC (Rhode Island Public Expenditure Council)?
In many ways. Our mission may be a little bit different. Programmatically we may be pretty similar to RIPEC.
Your form of delivery is similar to RIPEC?
Yes, and Gary Sasse of RIPEC is on our board. And certainly there is some overlap in not only our boards, but in our agenda. RIPEC has recently championed an urban strategy. An urban revitalization is an important part of our agenda, because we think any growth strategy in Rhode Island that doesn’t focus on strengthening our cities is not a broad or sensible growth strategy, because we’re the second most urbanized state in the country.
Where does your funding come from?
Our funding right now is from three broad sources. Some funding from the corporate community. That is a relatively small part of our funding. We’re still in the process of tapping a major grant from the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) that was secured last year. Our third source of funding is five foundations, including the Prince Charitable Trust, Rhode Island Foundation, the Van Burin Foundation, Dunn Foundation.
Total budget?
About $300,000. We’re a 501C3.
What are your five top issues?
I can speak broadly about what they are. We are still in the process of figuring out some of the specific legislative or policy initiatives we want to champion. Speaking broadly, certainly developing a set of tools for urban revitalization and within that looking at our approach to Brownfields development and the state of the Brownfield incentive program in Rhode Island. It’s certainly part of urban revitalization, but it may evolve into a whole focus for us.
Another issue that is certainly out there, we haven’t tacked it directly yet, is property tax reform. The over-reliance on the property tax to fund education in Rhode Island creates sort of perverse incentives for irrational development for sprawl, inefficient development. It basically encourages people to move to outlying communities and discourages people from staying in the cities. It makes it difficult for the cities to have enough funding for quality education and what’s perceived as quality education and it makes the outlying areas even more attractive than they might otherwise be to young families. That is certainly an issue long range that in some way we feel a need to address. It may not be an issue that we should be taking the lead on, but it is certainly an issue we want to be weighing in on.
Open space preservation is an important concern. Rhode Island, because of its small size, has only a limited amount of land to develop and in some of our less urbanized areas in particular there are projections that in the next 10 to 15 years all of the developable lands in certain communities will be developed. In places like South Kingstown and Cumberland there’s a real need to have an aggressive open space preservation strategy if we’re going to preserve a lot of the physical character of Rhode Island that makes it a place with a high quality of life, that makes it attractive to a lot of executives to relocate their companies here. So we see some of the land preservation and environmental aspects of smart growth as economic development tools. We don’t see that the open space-preservation as sort of an esoteric environmental issue that doesn’t have anything to do with economic development.
Quality of life issues.
Right. Because in my view and the view of a lot of my board that’s one of Rhode Island’s biggest selling points, the quality of life. We don’t have as many big industrial sites as Michigan or Ohio or Illinois, but we have a quality of life that arguably surpasses those places. But if we are not proactive about planning our future, planning our growth, managing our growth, then we could lose that major asset. It is an asset both environmentally and economically, if marketed the right way and handled the right way.
One other area that is very important, promoting a more comprehensive, integrated and disciplined approach to planning major economic development projects.
Gary Sasse has in the past complained that Rhode Island has lacked a comprehensive economic plan, a vision. Are you comfortable that process is moving along, or do you see a need to paying more attention to creating a vision for Rhode Island’s economic future?
I think the process is moving along, but I think it is such an important element of maximizing Rhode Island’s future, we need to pay even more attention to it. We, in Grow Smart Rhode Island, want to be part of that, and we’ve had some preliminary discussions with Kip Bergstrom at the Economic Policy Council about how we might be able to collaborate with EPC in their efforts to fine tune an economic development plan for the state. I think it’s coming along, but I think it needs to be an even higher priority for state government and for community leaders than it has been. I think there has been a tendency in Rhode Island to have low self esteem and therefore maybe be a little overly influenced by outside overtures from developers. We’ve had a tendency to wait for developers to come to us and sort of overreact to their offers or their proposals, as opposed to saying here are the three or four areas we want to really bring the added value to the state and we’re going after these folks. We sort of let the play c
ome to us rather than the other way around. I think that’s in part because we haven’t had a comprehensive strategy. When you don’t have a comprehensive strategy you tend to be reactive rather than proactive.
How is Providence Place compatible with Grow Smart’s mission?
On balance, Providence Place is a plus for Rhode Island and I think it’s basically, conceptually, at least, in keeping with smart growth principles, because it’s a major development in the inner city, in the heart of an urban area. Where there already is a lot of infrastructure established, it’s not gobbling pristine open space. It’s not encroaching on Narragansett Bay. Overall I think it’s a good thing for our economy and it is relatively smart growth.
Moving a little to our south, the Quonset port and Grow Smart’s position.
We have not taken a position on the port. We have taken a position for better planning of the development of the whole industrial site that is known as Quonset Point/Davisville, and we have identified some gaps in the planning for development of Quonset Point/Davisville. There seems to be, for example, some lack of synchronization from the time the main road connections, road improvements that are necessary for quality development and the proposed beginning of development of the commerce park and also of the port. There’s a disconnect there, which we think needs to be addressed if we going to really maximize the marketability of Quonset Point/Davisville. There’s also some serious questions we have whether there has been enough analysis of the impact that 23,000 new jobs at Quonset Point/Davisville will have on some of the relatively small communities that are pretty much in the bullseye of Quonset Point/Davisville. A lot of those communities, some of them, don’t have the professional planning staff to deal with an influx of several thousand new people.
Are you talking about the North Kingstown-East Greenwich
Exeter. North Kingstown probably has a lot more planning capacity than an Exeter, so there is certainly a variation in the level of ability to absorb a major new level of traffic, major new residential developments.
Looking at Rhode Island as a whole, what do you see as Rhode Island’s economic future, identity?
I don’t know what specific industry it is, but I think there are some clear assets that we need to capitalize on, focus on. And we are to some extent. One is clearly our higher education infrastructure. My understanding is Rhode Island has more post-secondary students per capita than any other state in America, and the research dollars and the research talent that accompany that kind of statistic is a real resource to be cultivated.
But they don’t stay here.
A number of them don’t, and that’s a problem, but a lot of the professors are here and a lot of the professors are involved in research that is transferable to the marketplace. And I know the state is making some efforts, through the Samuel Slater program and some other programs to try to tap into that higher education base. I think that has to guide some of our economic developing thinking, that resource. That’s a very significant resource.
I think another resource we’ve always had and hopefully will always have is Narragansett Bay. A lot of the economic development potential of the bay may be to make sure it is not spoiled, because it obviously has tremendous tourism potential if it continues at least in large parts of it to be relative clean and pristine. I think Rhode Island is an attractive place for people in the information age, for people involved in that industry. I think another broad challenge is finding more well paying middle level jobs for Rhode Islanders, so people who do get a college degree in Rhode Island do have more opportunities to stay in the state.
There have been some those who believe that the political perception outside of Rhode Island’s borders hurts the state in attracting businesses. Now we have the scandal at Providence City Hall. How damaging is that going to be to the potential for further economic growth?
To some extent it depends on how extensive the proven corruption is. Clearly if it’s just a couple of low level functionaries it is not going to have a major impact. If it reaches much higher then it could have a bigger impact, and that would be very frustrating because in so many ways Providence is on a roll and at least other parts of Rhode Island are on the edge of opportunity for positive smart growth. It would be very very damaging, certainly from a timing standpoint, for this to be a major scandal that distracts people from the optimism and the increased self-esteem and the economic momentum that has built the last couple of years.
But as somebody who has worked at the national level and who has worked on issue and political campaigns in states other than Rhode Island, I think we need to have some perspective of the fact that there is a certain level of corruption in many states. Not that we should be complacent about corruption here or corruption everywhere. It is not as if Rhode Island is the only place that has corruption. Just to be very pragmatic some of the states we’re competing with for business and development also have corruption problems. Another thing we can’t lose sight of overall is the level of public morality and public ethics in the political sphere in Rhode Island is better than it was 10 or 20 years ago, even if there is this looming scandal in Providence. You’ve got a clean governor, you’ve got open government, reform oriented general officers, certainly a congressional delegation that doesn’t have a hint of any scandal.
If there is one issue as a whole that Rhode Island needs to tackle what is it?
Broadly speaking I think it is developing both the courage and the capacity to plan in a comprehensive and integrated way for our economic future. That’s probably the single biggest challenge. Improving our educational system and being aggressive stewards of our natural and cultural heritage is a part of that effort to plan effectively for our economic future. Part of this is having self esteem. If we continue to have this increase in self esteem I think that will help us feel as if we can take charge of our own destiny instead of having this small state inferiority complex where we feel like we’re just going to be at the whim of broader national, regional trends we have no control over.
