Page 6 — THE LACONIA DAILY SUN, Saturday, November 9, 2013
Steve Norton & Daniel Barrick
Redefining New Hampshire’s Economic Advantage What is New Hampshire’s strategy for economic growth? Does it center on high-tech manufacturing? Tourism? The “green” economy? Is it focused on attracting young professionals and families to the state? Or cater to our growing retiree population? What role should the state’s colleges and universities play in this? For a long time, the state enjoyed relative prosperity without needing a clearly defined economic strategy. With high rates of in-migration, a clean environment, a comparative advantage in tax structure, and proximity to the Boston metropolitan area, New Hampshire benefited from decades of strong economic growth. But with fewer people moving into the state in recent years, New Hampshire’s decision-makers realize they need to craft a conscious strategy to maintain our many economic and quality of life advantages. For the past six months, the New Hampshire Center for Public Policy Studies has been sifting through dozens of measurements of New Hampshire’s economy and business climate. Our goal: To devise a more data-based method of understanding the state’s strengths and challenges, and how those stack up to the rest of the country. We tried to cover a wide range of measures: college-going rates, real estate prices prices, bridge and road conditions, business taxes, energy prices, volunteering rates, health care costs, and dozens more. And we compared New Hampshire to our New England neighbors, as well as a handful of competitor states that are faring well in post-recession world. What does the data tell us? As a snapshot of current conditions, our numbers indicate that New Hampshire is doing quite well in many measures of economic health. But many of the areas where New Hampshire excels — high levels of home ownership, high levels educational attainment and high rates of health insurance coverage, among others — point to past or current conditions. In other words, they are the result of policies and trends that have been in place for some time but don’t necessarily guarantee much about the economy of coming years. By contrast, in many of the more “future-oriented” measures — average student debt loads, growth in the 35-to-44-year-old share of the population, housing costs, and the rate of college-going among high school graduates — New Hampshire rates much less favorably. Why is this worrisome? Many of these measures are directly linked to the state’s ability to attract and retain young people and arm them with the skills needed to compete for good jobs in coming years. In addition, and perhaps more troubling for short-term economic planning,
New Hampshire ranks poorly on several measures of business costs, including energy and health care expenses. Any economy is a complicated system of shifting, inter-related factors, and reducing it to a handful of data points over-simplifies matters. But this data should help provoke discussion around the question of what New Hampshire’s economic goals and priorities should be. The answer to that, in turn, will be determined by figuring out how and against whom New Hampshire is competing for economic growth and human capital. Do we want to emphasize luring businesses with our highly-educated, flexible workforce, despite high business costs? Do we want to cast a wider net, and compete against states like Colorado, Utah and Virginia, which are attracting skilled young professionals looking for places that offer high wages and a high quality of life? And what specific industries might offer us the best competitive advantage? At the same time, policymakers will want to focus on indicators specific to the state’s local economies, as some measurements may tell a more useful story when measured at the regional level. For instance, the statewide data about college attainment levels obscures vast differences across New Hampshire, with much higher rates of college attainment in the state’s southern tier and lower levels in the North Country and rural areas. If policymakers want to attract employers to particular regions of the state, they must acknowledge the specific challenges posed by these varying levels of education, among other factors. There are several existing initiatives across the state grappling with these very issues, including attempts at developing stronger partnerships between community colleges and local employers, incentives to develop “green” start-up companies, and efforts to increase New Hampshire’s homegrown science, technology and engineering workforce. Of course, no one approach will meet all of New Hampshire’s economic needs. But identifying policies that address real needs as reflected in objective data is a place where any conversion about the state’s future needs to start. (Steve Norton is executive director and Dan Barrick is deputy director of the New Hampshire Center for Public Policy Studies. The Center is an independent, nonprofit, non-partisan organization that pursues data-driven research on public policy. Established in 1996, the Center’s mission is to raise new ideas and improve policy debates through quality information and analysis on issues shaping New Hampshire’s future. Its work includes research on the state budget, public school funding and health care finance. More information at nhpolicy.org.)
LETTERS Another newspaper editor (and E.J.) served as mayor in 1930s To The Daily Sun, Congratulations are in order for Edward J. Engler, a great newspaperman, upon his election as Mayor of Laconia. He follows in the footsteps of another civic-minded publisher, who shared his first name and middle initial, the late Edward J. Gallagher (18901978), who founded what was then the Laconia Evening Citizen in 1925. Mr. Gallagher, a Democrat when the city held partisan elections, was mayor of Laconia from 1937 to 1939. Although a New Deal Democrat who served his party as state vice chairman (1939) as a delegate to its national convention (1944), and as a delegate to two state constitutional conventions (1912, 1956), Mr. Gallagher nevertheless took pains to be a fair reporter of the news and to cultivate a thoughtful but low key editorial policy — a reflection of his philosophy that it’s not a good idea for a newspaper to, in his words, “keep a community all stirred up.” Like Mr. Engler, “E.J.,” as Gallagher was commonly known around and about, was a transplant, who also like Mr. Engler, had published a newspaper in another city, before laying roots in Laconia. Born in Concord, Gallagher first published the Concord Daily Patriot before its offices burned in a spectacular fire that completely destroyed the White’s Opera House Block on Park Street near the State House in 1920, which Gallagher also owned.
But Gallagher would not be stopped. After suffering a loss of over $150,000, a huge amount in 1920, within five years he was up and running his presses in Laconia, publishing a daily newspaper begun from scratch that became successful throughout his lifetime and beyond. And like E.J. Gallagher, Mr. Engler must be made of similar stuff to even contemplate, let alone attempt to pioneer a daily newspaper at a time when most such animals were, and are, on life support, and in a city that long had one, to boot. But The Laconia Daily Sun is prospering. Read in nearly every waiting room, diner, barbershop and breakfast table in the Lakes Region, the paper not only efficiently presents the news of the day in an attractive format, but generously provides a lively public forum for its readers as none other. And darned if it isn’t free of charge. And, that’s one thing old E.J. Gallagher did not do. Now, Mr. Engler, who among many other accomplishments has held elective office before, as did his late counterpart, will soon be sworn in as Mayor of Laconia. So, congratulations and best wishes are indeed the order of the day, “Your Honor!” Or should we now be calling you “E.J.”? Guess maybe both would work. Dean Dexter Concord/Meredith
Experts on global warming now calling for more nuclear plants To The Daily Sun, I’m shocked, SHOCKED! Really, I am because I just read that four of the foremost experts on global warming are calling on the world to build more nuke power plants. Right, more nuke plants. In a letter to other green energy experts and science publications, James Hansen — former top NASA scientist, Ken Caldeira — of the Carngie Institute, Kerry Emanual of MIT and Tom Wigley of the University of Adelaid in Australia all believe we have no choice because solar and wind power units just can’t scale up in time. I’ve never been a big fan of the
green movement but if folks like these are calling for nukes I may have to think about the idea a little more? I’m apparently not alone because most of the green movement has and is very much against the nuke industry. Nukes have never been a big favorite of mine either, mostly because of the disposal problems and more recently fear they could attract terrorist attacks. Must feel like a rock and a hard place for the experts. This will be interesting to see how the devoted green activists respond to this. Steve Earle Hill
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