Weekend at Bernie’s

The economic development playbook by which Tulsa has been operating, is dead and gone, and (most) everyone knows it.

Carlos Moreno
Aug 23, 2017 · 5 min read

Taking a look at the way that Tulsa plans to create jobs — spend hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to woo out-of-state Fortune 500 companies to relocate here, then spend millions to build them infrastructure via tax packages that last decades — brings to mind the film, “Weekend at Bernie’s.

You know the stupid ’80s movie: Two bungling young low-level officemates are invited on vacation to their boss’s island beach house, only to discover when they get there, that their boss has been killed. Rather than have their weekend ruined, they prop “Bernie” up and pretend he’s still alive so that they can continue to party and have a great time.

TulsaNow boardmember Michael Bates has long been critical of Tulsa’s irresponsible and adolescent economic development strategy. More than a decade ago, Batestline discussed the flawed logic in building infrastructure via tax incentives for the aerospace giant Boeing, citing a Tulsa World editorial from 1995. So this isn’t a new conversation.

In national circles, the current default strategy and its shortcomings are discussed in the work of researcher Nathan Jensen in the recent Washington Post article:

concluded that there is “no evidence” that those oft-used tax incentive programs have any positive effect on job creation. In fact, by cutting into public funds that could have been used for other programs that, say, spur private investment or fund research, and by making it harder for employers who do not receive tax breaks to compete in the market, the programs may actually be having a detrimental effect.
—JD Harrison, Washington Post

The New York Times extensively studied city and state tax incentives given to corporations, and (as predicted) Oklahoma shows up in a disturbing place on these charts: high investments per capita, for a relatively low average wage. In other words, we’re increasing taxes for workers, and keeping their wages low.

A 2011 Lincoln Institute of Land Policy study found property tax incentives to be counterproductive, being all too frequently given to companies that would have chosen the same location anyway. So instead of creating new jobs or spurring employment, the main effect of incentives is simply to deplete a community’s tax base. Since poorer states and communities are more likely to use incentives in the first place, the end result is to undermine the resources and revenues of the places that can least afford it.
—Citylab

This realization is echoed in the book “Strong Towns” by Charles Marohn. He calls this strategy, “The Growth Ponzi Scheme,” stating that the amount in taxes that citizens are continually having to pay more and more of, “does not come near to covering the costs of maintaining the infrastructure. In America, we have a ticking time bomb of unfunded liability for infrastructure maintenance.”

Marohn was the keynote speaker at the Walkability Summit, hosted by INCOG and the health department. Here’s his talk, as well as the others from the summit:

What’s Tulsa’s track record?

Tulsa is at a tug-of-war with itself.

Roughly nine years ago, a youth civic engagement movement arose in Tulsa, largely around the premise that cities are in global competition for smart, creative minds, which are the currency of a post-industrial economy and critical for economic development. Bear-hugged to death by the Tulsa Regional Chamber, YP Tulsa gave birth to Tulsa Tough, helped keep the Matthews Warehouse (which became AHHA) on the 3rd penny sales tax package, and make it OK in this city to celebrate diversity and entrepreneurship.

Since then the City of Tulsa funded, and then de-funded a series of small-business programs (remember the Tulsey Awards?). We put in their place the “Quick Action Closing Fund”: a zombie of a stupid idea (resurrected from the Chamber’s Vision2 tax package, that voters mercilessly killed), as one of the agenda items on this year’s Regional Chamber’s OneVoice agenda.

We have a comprehensive plan that is the envy of many cities, we have a new staff at INCOG and the Planning Department who want to do their job and support the plan and help neighborhoods grow and thrive. On the other hand you have a mayoral staff and TMAPC who actively berate, openly insult, and shoot down the work of the Planning Department in public meetings on a regular basis. Four years later, we’re still working on trying to implement the recommendations from that plan. And many feel even the small progress made, is too much.

The Tulsa Regional Chamber wants, desperately, to say that it’s in favor of a strong downtown, and supportive of this idea that young professionals are the key to a bright future. But they can’t bring themselves to say that investing in pedestrian infrastructure and in mass transit are good ideas. They can’t support form-based planning in the Pearl, for fear of upsetting their legacy members.

Our Transportation Advisory Board would love to push forward policy that makes our streets more safe for pedestrians (an idea supported by the Tulsa Police Department and Tulsa Public Schools), and supports and encourages a better mass transit system. Well, half of it would. The other half thinks that this is all nonsense, and that a good transportation policy means building wider roads.

The ink is not yet dry on the last tax package Tulsa voters agreed on: $918M one year ago, with 2/3 of that money going to lay asphalt on the ground ($647M is a lot of asphalt…considering that we voted in 2008 to spend almost $600M on streets and nothing else), and already starting are the talks about what to do with the money we’ll need to borrow in 2016. What are the big ideas? More police. More streets.

We can have a real discussion on the future of our city, between now and 2016. Or we can dust off the dead guy, keep pretending we’re partying and having a good time.


Originally published at tulsanow.org.

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Carlos Moreno

Written by

community volunteer & magic bean buyer. @cap_tulsa graphic designer, @codefortulsa captain, @techlahoma board, @NextCityOrg vanguard. opinions are my own.

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