Urban Regeneration Bill

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Urban Regeneration Bill

1. Indicators of Distress:

a) Negative population growth from 1970 until the most recent census
b) A poverty rate above the National average
c) An unemployment rate above the National average for at least three of the previous five years

2. Cities meeting the above criteria, are eligable for federal grants and localised tax breaks, the level of which to be determined on a case by case basis by an Urban Regeneration Commision (an independent body administered by the Federal Government)

3. Wherever possible incentives should be given to encourage the return of industries of historic importance to the city in question.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Just to clarify: s.3 is intended more as a *direction* to the proposed Urban Regeneration Commision than anything else

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Why do we need another federal bureaucratic wing to tell people that it only supports giving money to help certain sectors in certain places, but to tell others to go away because they don't fit a "industry of historic importance"?

I didn't say that

[Filuwaúrdjan]

(whose scope and cost to the taxpayer is still unclear)

The people who will be helped are taxpayers too.

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I'm not sure what your talking about here... what the 3rd clause is directing the commision to do is wherever possible[/s] bringing back to the city in question, old industries that were important to the city (eg: steel in Pittsburgh, Tires in Akron etc. etc.) with the intention of creating greater community spirit and confidence.

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Do people matter?

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I am not advocating building concentration camps, killing my political opponants or being generally racist and dictatorial.
Misuse of "fascism" as a generic term of abuse for something you don't like devalues the word and is very irresponsible.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Your being intellectually dishonest to a shocking degree here.
Has anyone without an ideological axe to grind got any comments on the bill?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I'm currently on the fence regarding this one... while I agree that this certainly could be helpful to cities that need something like this, I also agree with SamSpade that I don't really like the idea of leaving the choice to the subjective decision of an independent government body regarding which cities get aid.  If Section 2 had more rigid guidelines that reduced or even eliminated the need for a bureaucratic organization to administer it, I would be much more in favor of it.

No, no, no... ALL cities fitting the requriments in S.1 get aid/incentives. The point of an independent body is to determine the level of aid/incentives given. It's either that, or a centralised quota based system that wouldn't be as effective.

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Note the fact that S.3 is more of a guideline than anything else. Also note the use of "wherever possible".
The point of S.3 is to bring back a little bit of confidence and pride to the distressed cities, which will have the effect of helping other businesses (especially smaller shops) to thrive.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I am not being intellectually dishonest at all and I have no ideological axe to grind here either.

You claimed that this bill "reeks of fascism". You were being intellectually dishonest to claim that.

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Nice stock response there. Innacurate and with no substance, but giving you the oppertunity to fit in a nice soundbite for your election campaign.

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Have you actually read the bill? Nowhere does it say new industries will not be encouraged to move to distressed cities.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I oppose this because it makes no sense to spend my tax money to drag an industry back to a city it left because it was unprofitable.  Al, the industry didn't leave for no reason.  It left because it could do business better else where.  No need to spend money to drag it back.

Indeed. And if you pull the industry back from where it is now, the people from that area end up suffering. The company isn't going to maintain more factories or whatever when it is not cost effective to do so.

Please read the damned thing before resorting to knee jerk responces. Thank you.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I still am not convinced that an independent organization would be more effective, though.  As others have noted, wouldn't this leave it open to subjectiveness, which would inevitably lead to the possibility of corruption? If you can show how the independent organization method of doing it is better than a more rigid, objective method, my mind is certainly changeable here, but at the moment I'm not sure.

As far as corruption goes, you'll get more corruption in a city that's falling apart than a city that isn't.
The commision would basically be a small group of impartial and apolitical civil servants not some juggernaught employing thousands.
The reason why a case by case approach is needed is very simple: different cities have different problems and are more suitable for certain industries than others. If you use a quota method (based on... say population, poverty rate, unemployment rate and % population difference) to determined incentives... it's just not going to work. Now, the commision will probably use quotas for determining grants etc., but I feel that it would be inappropriate for the Senate to micro-manage that kind of thing. Local solutions for local problems.

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I'm not proposing that they should be given priority over everything else, I just think that it's a good idea to try to encourage bringing the industries that helped make the city.
It's a small part of the overall bill and I'll strike it if nessessary (although I'd prefer not to).

[Filuwaúrdjan]

bump... can we get a vote on this now?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

S.3 doesn't seem to have a lot of support (mostly my fault: I wasn't clear enough) Oh well. I'll strike it from the bill then.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Urban Regeneration Bill

1. Indicators of Distress:

a) Negative population growth from 1970 until the most recent census
b) A poverty rate above the National average
c) An unemployment rate above the National average for at least three of the previous five years

2. Cities meeting the above criteria, are eligable for federal grants and localised tax breaks, the level of which to be determined on a case by case basis by an Urban Regeneration Commision (an independent body of impartial civil servants, administered by the Federal Government)

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Urban Regeneration Bill

1. Indicators of Distress:

a) Negative population growth from 1970 until the most recent census
b) A poverty rate above the National average
c) An unemployment rate above the National average for at least three of the previous five years

2. Cities meeting the above criteria, are eligable for federal grants and localised tax breaks, the level of which to be determined on a case by case basis by an Urban Regeneration Commision (an independent body of impartial civil servants, administered by the Federal Government)

How about we just eliminate Section 2 and just make this bill about defining urban decay.

Because that wouldn't do anything to help people in distressed areas

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I've struck the bit (historical importance) that seemed to be the problem

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I've struck the bit (historical importance) that seemed to be the problem

Now to the corrupt council part.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Just a thought, but perhaps some sort of job retraining via, say, community colleges, could be useful to have in the bill? You know, to help out those workers whose jobs were lost and unlikely to return?

Comments?

Aha... originally this (Urban Regeneration) was part a) of a joint bill me and Supersoulty were working on. If this passes I'll introduce the other half (educational stuff) if he doesn't.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I'm sorry, but what the f*** are you on about?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

A parody of the greatest movie tralier of all time, I thought it was funny anyway.

This is a special interest bill that tries to put regional interests ahead of national interests, and I oppose it.

You're trying to lure businesses to Union dominated states and away from right to work sunbelt states.  Unions have a greater hold in Michigan than Tennessee, so you want o make California taxpayers subsidize the big government rustbelt union machines in Ohio instead of having the various regions develop more business friendly enviroments.  This is a huge special interest bill, hence the parody.

Seeing as this is coming from a former Defense Secretary who was always asking for more and more money for his department... I don't know how to take the junior Senator from District Five's remarks.

Put simply: they seem to be not only very innacurate, but paranoid and with more than a whiff of NIMBY-ism.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

NIMBYism?  Do you even know what that is?  You're not building anything in my backyard, you're trying to move factories and jobs OUT of mny backyard.  Those are the very things I want IN my backyard.

This bill does not move anything out of anywhere. The general idea is to encourage economic growth (which would almost certainly be concentrated in manufacturing) in areas that desperately need it.

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It could be argued that some of it was... although I don't think it was and you'll note that I voted for 'em.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The amount of manufacturing that will take place will only be enough to satisfy demand.  When one factory is needed, you don't build one in Michigan and Arizona, you just build in one.  Since no city in Arizona could possibly qualify as having historic importance to maufacturing, the tax breaks will go to people who build a factory in Michigan instead of Arizona, or move out of Arizona into Michigan.  The cities that qualify for tax breaks are almost exclusively going to be in the industrial midwest, and so the industrial midwest will begin to suck jobs in from other areas as businesses relocate to get tax breaks.

This will encourage these industrial states to keep on with their high tax, high regulation, closed shop policies, while those states that pursue growth oriented policies get screwed because they aren't of "historical importance".  So yes, this bill will result in a relocation of jobs and businesses from the sunbelt to the rustbelt.

I've got rid of the historic importance bit

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Just a thought, but perhaps some sort of job retraining via, say, community colleges, could be useful to have in the bill? You know, to help out those workers whose jobs were lost and unlikely to return?

Comments?

Aha... originally this (Urban Regeneration) was part a) of a joint bill me and Supersoulty were working on. If this passes I'll introduce the other half (educational stuff) if he doesn't.

I appologize for that Al.  I hope I can work on that soon.  But it I get overloaded, I would be happy if you took it over for me.  I'm up to my ears in research that I have to do for other things, all the research required for that bill would just be a huge pain in the ass.

I'd be happy to do it