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May 2, 2006
Museums as pork?
If you want to know what the hot new trend in local economic development, look at what the politicians are lining up for. Right now, the pork-o-meter is pointing to cultural and arts development. As the New York Times - "Pork Under Glass? Small Museums and Their Patrons on Capitol Hill" reports:
This year, government watchdog groups have held up small museums as symbols of ridicule. Besides the teapot museum, a glass-blowing museum in Ohio and a federally financed parking lot for an art museum in Omaha have been singled out by budget hawks in Congress in speeches and press releases.
Citizens Against Government Waste, a budget watchdog group, is trying to keep track of them. It has identified 1,030 museum-related projects approved since 1995, worth $527.4 million; 79 have appeared in the current fiscal year, for $27.3 million.
Compared with skyscraping sums given to highways, the military and social programs, the museum grants are governmental loose change. Many recipients enjoy broad public support as beloved historical icons and popular local attractions; for politicians, they are hoped-for economic engines as well as political plums.
Some defend earmarks to small cultural groups in rural or disadvantaged urban areas as essential for their survival. While the Metropolitan Museum of Art can tap big benefactors for support, the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, Wash., can’t.
But critics say that some of these organizations and museums have significant private backing, and even if they don’t the funds should not be based on the whims of powerful lawmakers who happen to be on appropriations committees.
In the last appropriations cycle, it was the same story with Citizens Against Government [to use what their correct title should be] and others going after a proposed grant for the Punxsutawney Weather Discovery Center -- home of that renowned weather forecaster Phil.
Other spending in the last spending bill that were highlighted by the fiscal guardians of the Republic include: Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville; the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame; the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland; the Merry Go Round Playhouse, Auburn, N.Y.; the American Cotton Museum; the B.B. King Museum; High Falls Film Festival in Rochester, New York; the Blowing Rock Performing Arts Center in Blowing Rock North Carolina; and the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum in Hatteras, North Carolina.
In all fairness, Citizens are not simply cultural philistines. They hate any government spending (other than defense). But they have provided a great leading indicator of what is hot.
Pork used to be, and still is, about roads and dams. These were (and are) justified as economic development investments. At some point, research and development projects were added as favorite earmark targets. Now, we have museums and performing arts centers. What is going on?
Members of Congress routine defend their pork as being responsive to local priorities. My point is not to defend -- or condemn -- the process of Congressional earmarks. But if the Congressmen’s assertions are even partially correct, the increased attention to arts and cultural activities as economic development may be an indicator of a shift in the local outlook.
As I've noted many times, we now live in the I-Cubed Economy: Information, Intangibles and Innovation. Information, knowledge and other intangibles now power economic prosperity and wealth creation. Intangible assets – worker skills and know-how, informal relationships that feed creativity and new ideas, high-performance work organizations, formal intellectual property, brand names – are the new keys to competitive advantage. Intangibles and information drive our innovation process, a combination of formal research and informal creativity. These elements combine to produce productivity and improvement gains needed to maintain prosperity. Part of this shift has been the rise, as Richard Florida and others have argued, of new creative industries.
Since economic activity is no longer merely a process of combining capital, energy, materials and labor, local economic requires identifying and utilizing that there intangible assets. One of the major economic intangibles that a community possesses is its unique cultural and historic resources. It is important not just as part of the multi-billion dollar tourism industries. It is also important for creating the environment for attracting high-talent, high creative workers to populate those creative industries.
Thus, Congress has heard from their constituents about the importance of cultural intangible assets. More and more, home-town leaders understand the role of these assets as a foundation upon which communities can build their local economy. In Liverpool, England it was the new Beatles museum that helped spark an economic revival. In Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, it is it Al Capon’s smuggling hideouts. In New York City, it’s Broadway. And in Punxsutawney, it’s Phil.
Now, having raised the problem, let us see whether the critics can come up with a solution to make these types of investments in a systematic, rational and transparent manner. We have routinely created programs for these types of government investments that used to be handed out piecemeal. A classic example is patents, which used to be handed out one at a time by the Crown. (I know, there are those of you who would dispute whether the patent process is rational and transparent -- but it is a process rather than a Congressional earmark.)
I suspect that those who are crying the loudest against earmarks for museums are not against earmarks -- they are against any government investment, period. That is too bad -- and very short sighted. If we are to have a successful and prosperous I-Cubed Economy, we need to make public investments in the types of assets that will grow that economy.
But that investment should be public and made through an open process. For that reason, I have advocated a Federal intangibles investment budget. This analysis of the budget would highlight those areas of Federal spending which go directly to the creation and maintenance of intangible assets: R&D, arts, information creation, etc. Which such information we could at least begin to have an informed discussion about how and where and how much we should be investing in intangible assets. Otherwise, we are simply in the dark and investing blind -- through the earmark process. We can do better.
Posted by Ken Jarboe at May 2, 2006 10:26 AM
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