Interesting article this AM out of the Bristol Herald Courier focusing on the impact the Virginia Tobacco Commission has had on Southwest and Southside communities over the last 10 or so years:
Since April 2000, the commission has spent slightly more than $813 million and set aside $189 million more for 1,700 grants tied to projects in 41 cities and counties across the state’s Southwest and Southside regions.
Of that money, $309 million went to tobacco farmers to help account for the revenues lost in a dying industry. This commission spending program ended in 2012.
“We paid farmers for their lost quotas,” said commission Chairman Delegate Terry Kilgore of Gate City. “We’re the only state that did that.”
One of the struggles with redistribution programs — and this is effective redistribution/relief — is that rarely is it used to revitalize or reorient communities in just the right way. Too often, it’s easy to take the initial “sugar rush” of a cash handout (as several politicians and bureaucrats appear to have done) and leave infrastructure by the wayside.
I had a conversation with a state delegate whose name I shall leave nameless in order not to embarrass him, but it was a phenomenal idea, to take the remaining tobacco money and go back into the communities with STEM campuses attached to the Virginia Community College System, perhaps surrounded by minor level tech corridors which are properly endowed for both faculty and small-scale microfinance opportunities.
The idea behind these STEM campuses would be very simple: take the old textile plants and turn them into incubators huddled around capital. One or two good ideas surrounded by hard-working labor (cheaper than northern Virginia or Hampton Roads) with ready access to Longwood University, Virginia Tech, Radford University, Hampden-Sydney College, and the University of Virginia? Instead of one Silicon Valley or Tysons Corner, it would be a half dozen of them scattered across Virginia in places where tobacco could be replaced with technology.
It’s an innovative thought, and sadly I can only own the embellishment of it rather than having thought of it on my own. I wonder though, in a Tea Party environment hostile to any spending in any form, or with Democrats eager to buy constituencies, whether such a great idea could be championed and further still survive the political divide.
I’d like to think so.
