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Perhaps it's because I'm a hick in the sticks, but I have trouble understanding certain metropolitan excitements, such as the recent courtship of Boeing.
The company had announced that for some reason, the corporation would work better if its headquarters were moved away from its primary aircraft manufacturing facilities. Three cities were finalists: Denver, Dallas and Chicago.
Now, why would Denver want Boeing? Our legislature just got called into special session to address growth issues in Colorado, and it would appear that one way to get a handle on growth would be to avoid subsidizing it, and yet Denver and Colorado were willing to spend $28 million to attract Boeing.
What are we to read into that? Does it send the message that Colorado is such a wretched place that we must bribe people to live and work here?
Or does that send the message that we really want to roll over for whoever might move a few hundred jobs here? If that's the case, why not just offer every entrepreneur $59,000 for every job created by a given enterprise? What makes Boeing so special?
The general answer to that is that Boeing is a very well-known company, and so getting Boeing to move to the metro area would lead to good publicity, which would in turn persuade more Fortune 500 companies to make their headquarters in or near Denver.
That assumption seems rather dubious. What high-level
corporate executive is so ignorant that he'd see a story in
the paper with the phrase Denver-based Boeing,
and
then think Denver? Where's that? You know, if Boeing
is based there, then it must be a pretty good place, and we
should move International Widget there, too.
Further, since the aircraft industry is cyclical, not
all the publicity would be favorable: Denver-based
Boeing announced yesterday that it would lay off 7,000
workers in the wake of the worst aerospace downturn since
1971, when the company ...
So the public-relations angle doesn't really work, no matter how you look at it. If it means more bad news coming from Denver, then it doesn't help the local image. And if it inspires executives to think that Colorado is a great relocation site, then it just aggravates the growth problems we already have.
Thus, we should be grateful for the general failures exhibited by various governors and mayors.
Over the past dozen years or so, Colorado and Denver have failed to get the 2002 Winter Olympics, and so the associated congestion and scandal went to Salt Lake City. We didn't get Ziff-Davis publishing, which stayed in New York. United Airlines did not build a big maintenance facility in Colorado. Nike did not move its headquarters to Table Mountain in Golden.
In fact, I can't think of any corporate seduction that our leaders have actually accomplished in recent years.
There seems to be a formula. Some big company announces that it might move its headquarters. Denver is on the short list. Various movers and shakers get together and present a proposal, which always involves taking money from people who make $24,000 a year, and giving it to people who make $2.4 million a year.
The corporate decision-makers visit and get wined and
dined, and optimistic stories appear about how favorably
they were impressed by the quality of life
and the
skilled labor force
available in Colorado.
And then, the company announces that it will go
somewhere else, thereby saving Coloradans money and
reducing, however slightly, the growth rate that eats into
the attractive Colorado life-style.
This has happened so often that I've changed my mind about the quality of leaders we elect in Colorado.
I had thought that they were inept, just plain incapable of closing the deal when some outfit wanted to move to Colorado.
But upon reflection, I'm impressed. They must be under tremendous pressure from Colorado's true ruling elite, the real-estate industry, to come up with ways to get more people to move here, especially people with a lot of money to spend on first homes, second homes, third homes and trophy homes.
And yet, our mayors and governors aren't stupid or evil
people. They know this isn't good for the vast majority of
Coloradans, the constituency they're supposed to be
serving. But they can't just come right out and say
something sensible like We can't stop you from moving
here, but we're sure as hell not going to pay you to do it.
Colorado is supposed to be a place for people who pay
their own way, not a dispensing entity for corporate
welfare.
So instead, our leaders go through the motions. The
performance looks real enough to fool the powerful realty
lobby, but some other city always ends up as the
winner,
and just about everybody here comes out
ahead.
What more can you ask from your politicians? I, for one, am impressed by their skill in this delicate art, and my only fear is that someday they'll stumble and we'll actually end up with a high-profile corporate headquarters.
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