There was a time when people complained that business
leaders called all the shots in Rochester. Then businesses started consolidating
and relocating corporate offices. Big-business commitment and leadership disappeared.
And we started longing for the old days.
Well, you may have noticed that in City Hall, the old days are
back.
Last November, Rochester elected a police chief to run the
city. What we got was… the Chamber of Commerce!
The new corporation counsel is a former RG&E chief and a
leader of the business execs known as the Rump Group. The new HR head is a
former Xerox VP. The new deputy mayor is the former CEO of the Center for
Governmental Research. The new head of economic development is a banking executive.
When the new mayor and his advisors looked for their dream
team, they looked outside of government, outside of politics — primarily, to
the business community.
This team certainly has strengths, one of which, as many
observers have said, is “connections.” Particularly in economic development, connections
within the business world, comfort moving in the business world, could be
a plus. New Economic Development Commissioner Carlos Carballada has lots and
lots of connections. And lots of respect in the business community.
It’s no small thing to see people like Carballada accepting
what will be a tough job. Carballada’s 71 years old. He doesn’t need this job.
He took it, he says, to serve the community.
But the team also has some potential weaknesses — staying
power among them. Will the business execs be able to put up with the hassles of
their new jobs? They’re now government officials. They answer to the public,
not to stockholders and a board of directors. They operate in the political
realm now, where change is slow and obstacles are often enormous. (What kind of
“connections” does the administration have in Albany? How much tolerance will
the business execs have for the Gang of Three?)
And what about goals, vision? What, for instance,
does the Duffy administration want the economic development department to do?
What does the business community want that department to do?
Is the goal simply to make Rochester more “business
friendly”? Needless red tape is destructive, but not all red tape is needless.
Running a city is a balancing act. Business interests sometimes conflict with
those of residents — on zoning, for instance. Will the Duffy administration
seek out and respect the opinions of residents? (If I were a
neighborhood-association leader, I’d be on guard. Just in case.)
Is the goal simply to keep the businesses we have in the
city and attract new ones? Rochester certainly needs more businesses, to
provide jobs and increase the tax base. Out at Kodak Park, jobs and tax base are
dropping with each falling building.
But the vision can’t be limited to the city. What Rochester
needs is something far bigger than that. What it needs, what it cannot survive
without, is true regional planning and economic development. And frankly, the
suburbs need that as much as the city does.
The first requirement: end the competition among us for
development: stop giving tax breaks, for instance, to businesses that move from
one Monroe County location to another. That will require extensive tax-base
sharing, so that when we try to attract a new business, we no longer care where
in the region it locates. And so that when a local business expands, we no
longer care where — because we all share in the taxes from the growth.
We’ll never get back to
financial health without regional planning and regional economic development.
Our intra-county and intra-region competition is killing us. It’s robbing the
city and the older suburbs. And it’s destroying our quality of life. Many suburban
officials are desperate for development, regardless of how it changes the
character of their towns.
This will require an enormous mind shift, particularly among
the leaders of county government and the Monroe County Republican Party. They
have fought this kind of metro approach before. Republican Party chair Steve
Minarik will see to it that they fight it again.
And here, perhaps, is Rochester’s greatest opportunity with
the Duffy team. Maybe the business leaders now running City Hall can inspire a
coup in county government and in the Republican Party. Maybe they can convince
the Republicans who control nearly all of the suburban towns that there is
nothing to fear from metropolitan planning.
But that will require business leaders — within City Hall
and without — to get involved in politics. In the recent past, they have been
reluctant to do that. Now, they have little choice.
This is, in a very real sense, a bold experiment: business
leaders doing the governing. We seem to have tried everything to turn the
economy around in Upstate New York. If this group can’t do it, what else is
left?
This article appears in Mar 1-7, 2006.
